Being sensitive, attuned, observant—these things don’t just improve your writing, they improve your life.

you’re a writer, you know what I mean: There’s the you that lives, and the you that chronicles the life.

Making your life is the ultimate creative act.

“Paying attention” is a metaphor in itself: attention a form of currency we pay to things we value. We pay with our time, our energy, our selves. Any artistic practice requires this kind of investment.

Attention is a form of love.

And if one cannot make a living at writing, then writing is freed from the responsibility of supporting us. We choose to do it anyway.

Take a walk or a drive. Book a window seat on a plane. Sit outside—in your backyard, on a park bench, at a café. Or make sure your writing desk (or reading chair) is next to a window with an appealing view. Take notes as you move through your day, or imagine what the speaker, narrator, or character might hear, smell, taste, or touch: the birds

Taking care of yourself is taking care of your creativity. Taking care of yourself as a whole human being is taking care of the writer in you.

If I don’t have paper handy, I might type notes into my phone or record myself talking so that I don’t lose the language or the idea.