Breaking Routine

When I see beautiful places,the stories start talking…

Taking in the tea trails, Sri Lanka

Routine is a wonderful thing, but breaking routine is absolutely delightful.

I haven’t been working on my WIP last month and it felt surprisingly fantastic. Instead, I went travelling around beautiful and isolated parts of Sri Lanka last month and it got me thinking about the concept of breaking routine and how it related to my own writing process.

Writing if you aren’t careful can drain and leech everything you have. For a while that’s how my writing life felt to me and then I realized something during my month of uninhibited exploring – One MUST fill the creative well. Not just for the sake of your ‘art’ but for you. In my case, the act of simply sitting at my desk and working through my revision edits was just not enough to fuel me to the end.

Was I still excited about my story?

Yes.

Could I work on it?

No.

I felt like I was dying from exhaustion and my muse needed CPR. Something needed to change if I wanted to see this WIP complete.

So I broke routine.

Such beautiful color ..

I took up photography and saw life through a different lens.

I wrote poetry and stretched my mind to see words differently.

I bonded with beautiful people despite the language barrier.

All in all, I was filling my body and soul with good things.

Falling in love with this sari a little bit

Travelling is a great passion of mine and every trip I learn something new about myself and the world. I was born in Sri Lanka, and despite visiting previously, this is the first time I left the country with a strong connection to my own sense of identity. For the first time in my life I saw the way a sari draped around a woman’s body absolutely beautiful! Here I was spending my youth avoiding looking ‘ethERnic’ at all cost. What was wrong with me?

You don’t need to go overseas to break routine to fill the well and nourish yourself – but you do need to be exposed to new things.

It is so easy to get caught up  in a routine that stunts growth – so if you take anything from this post I hope you find a way to break routine a little bit every day. It doesn’t matter if you work or if you study or if you are based at home – there is something you can do to shake things up a bit and experience something new.

Although the world is getting smaller, there is just so many things to see!

Just go outside your front door

How do you break routine a little bit everyday?

Love and light,

Anushka xx

My Writing Space

My creative messy space

It may not be your day, but it can still be your year – Unknown

Just a quick post. There have been a few distraction over the last week which has made me reflect on what is important to me. I vowed to be more selfish with my time so I can achieve the goals I want to achieve and grow into the writer I hope to be.

I want my life to be filled with inspiring people and I want to look back on this year and be proud of the work I have done.

I hope all of you have a wonderful and productive start to the week!

Love and Light,

Anushka xx

A writing related art project I’ll post about later in the week

I love the smell of fresh flowers in my office <3

Finding My Creature in Images

 

 

 

Lolly Bar Love! One of the many moments I fell in love with at a close friends engagement x

It’s the little touches that make a moment magical

LOVE!

Capturing a magical moment full of everything…

I have always been drawn to fire…

Nostalgic childhood moment..

Love and light,

Anushka xx

A Little Facelift

I am in the process of planning a revamp for the ‘About Me’ section referred to confusingly as ‘That Creature’ on my blog. Well not confusing to me, but I can see how that might not make immediate sense to new visitors to my blog.

There will be new photos, new wording, a little bit of this and a little bit of that and some laa diiiii daas. All in all, I hope it captures the vibe of this blog and the weirdo behind it a little bit better.

Since everything isn’t all about me, I thought I would open the floor so to speak and ask everyone what do you actually want to know? Although I post regularly-ish…I know I don’t reveal much about myself other that the fact I am writing a book. I also I haven’t done the whole:

 Anushka Dhanapala graduated with a BA in Arts (Journalism/Communications) and then…blah blah She lives with her pet dinosaur and three-legged lamb in a ranch somewhere in Columbia where she writes under the sparkle of the stars…blah blah blah….

So if you have any suggestions or questions you want to know about me feel free to ask so I can take that into account when I give that little empty section a little bit more ZING!

Love and light,

Anushka xx

My Writing Space

Paper can cut deeper than a knife, because a story can gut you through and through, until you’re forced to be reborn

- Kesenia Anske

 

I have been falling into a revision routine once again which feels great! I have been so absorbed in my work I didn’t even realise today was Monday! I don’t work Monday’s so that’s okay, but it does mean I forgot about my segment Finding My Creature in Images. If I get a chance I’ll post it today or tomorrow, if not…I’ll make sure next week is extra exciting!

I changed my location today because my lounge room is the only room with a heater (got to love little old houses with character). It’s been raining outside – finally – so all I wanted was to be snuggled up somewhere warm while I got lost in the dark, haunting world in my head.

It’s nice feeling like I”m making progress again, no matter how small. also, a BIG THANK YOU to everyone who has been so supportive during this journey, it means a lot!

Love and light,

Anushka xx

 

 

 

A Revision Funk

Chase your dreams until you catch them…and then dream, catch, and dream again!

– Dee Marie

Part of being an artist of any kind is about letting go – soaring into heights madness or uncontained delight – and being anchored. At the moment I feel like I’m floating through space in slow motion like a fat kid chasing cake, struggling to move my mind to focus on edits. It’s not that I don’t want to, I feel like I simply can’t. My brain has turned from malleable to concrete…or cake.

Last October I hired a freelance editor to look through my newly overhauled ms and fast forward a few months later I still haven’t been able to dive into the much yearned for feedback with my usual speed. I could blame this on a serious case of procrastination or I can sit down and be honest with myself.

Yes I was recovering from jet-lag, yes the soul-sucking heatwave consuming parts of Australia sucks my creativity and hydration out the window and yes I prioritize other things like study and work on some of the days allocated to revising. But that is not the heart of my problem here.

I have broken routine.

There is no point dwelling on what is broken, the real question is how do I get back into routine? What happened to me? Then it hit me today with startling clarity…I am surfing the internet way too much for no particular reason. I am normally very strict with my time online but somewhere between coming back and now, I kind of forgot that fact and paid dearly for my lapse of judgement.

Therefore, I have decided to do what I always do when I need to do some serious brain work…slash my internet time to pieces.

My plan of attack is as follows:

-       Deactivate Facebook, I don’t actually care about the mundane every day people post about.

-       Get rid of the unlimited data on my phone

-       Invest in a calendar. I had one last year and my productivity hit the roof.

-       Revise every day – even for 15 minutes – for 30 days. It takes 30 days to form a habit. I need the feeling of sitting down and looking at my manuscript to feel natural once again.  Once I reach that point again only then I will reevaluate my schedule.

Writing this post has been very cathartic for me and I feel like now I admitted I have a problem I can try to be brave and enter the world of words again. I’m not going to lie, It’s scary being away from a project for a while. Your brain feels clumsy and unrefined. But the important thing is, I’m willing to face the page again.

How about everyone else? Any tips in getting back into the revision swing of things once you’ve been away?

Love and light,

Anushka

My Writing Space

We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but a habit

- Aristotle

Keeping hydrated in this heatwave.

Each folder contains a separate project and sometimes just the act of reaching out for a colored binder gets me excited to do something and stop procrastinating.

After being away last month I have been struggling to ground myself back into a revision routine. The past week has been about overcoming jet lag and getting back into the swing of things at work so putting the creative brain on has been a little bit of a struggle I have to admit.

That said though, I believe this week will be better. I’m getting restless and just want to sink my teeth into revision and make some progress on this WIP! Catching up on everyone’s blog posts just wants me to make some progress too and I am a little bit mad at myself for the rusty start I have had so far.

How about you? What do you do when you lose touch with your revising mojo?

Love and light,

Anushka xx