Take 5 Friday: Five Writerly Ways to Celebrate World Kindness Day

Today, November 13, is World Kindness Day and I’m inviting you to celebrate by being kind to your writerly self and to your writerly friends.*

Given our habit of constantly trying to improve our writing, us writer-types can be a bit negative about our abilities and our skills. So, this is an excellent chance to consciously reverse that trend by choosing kindness as our lens today.

Here are 5 ways you can spread some writerly kindness:

Identify someone’s strengths

All too often we point out the parts of people’s writing that needs improvement. Today, I challenge you to tell someone something they are doing well. Let them know that they rock a good description or that their dialogue is vivid.

BONUS: I dare you to be kind to yourself and identify your own strengths.

Notice hard work

Maybe your writerly friends have been working away for a long time but they haven’t reached the point where they can share their work. Today is a great time to let them know that you see the work they are putting in.

BONUS: Have you complimented yourself on your efforts recently? Give it a try today!

Leave a review

You can make someone’s day with a good review. It doesn’t have to be long and it doesn’t have to complicated. If you have something nice to say about a book you read, why not do it today?

BONUS: Imagine a reader who LOVED your book. What would you want them to say? Do yourself the kindness of writing that review in the margins of your notebook or in your working document.

Share a post

Is your writerly friend posting away on social media and not getting much traction? Why not share one of their posts and add a compliment about them?

BONUS: You probably think you are flooding your social media with posts about your work but I’ll bet a lot of your friends aren’t seeing them. Just for today, share a few things without any guilt about it.

Offer support

Sometimes writing is a lonely and discouraging business. If you know a writer who is struggling, this would be a good day to offer some moral or practical support.

BONUS: Be kind to yourself by asking for support where you need it.

Celebrating World Kindness Day

Ideally, we’d be kind to ourselves and to each other every day but that doesn’t always work out the way we would like.

While we are working on being kinder every day, why not make the most of *this* day and share as much kindness as possible – writerly kindness or any other sort.

*Please be kind to other types of friends, too, of course!