Two Sylvias Weekly Muse: August 7, 2022

Issue 15

Hello Muse Readers,

Welcome to August!

In each issue of the Muse we strive to give you good advice about nurturing your creativity, developing a writing routine, sending out submissions, keeping a journal, etc., but this week we want to remind you that sometimes it’s important to simply slow down.

As creative people who want to explore our imaginations, compose poems and stories and get them into literary journals, maybe even publish books, we can sometimes pressure ourselves to focus on how much we produce and accomplish. We can slip into the mindset of “hustle culture” wherein every moment must be productive in some way. We recently ran across a “productivity video” on YouTube which suggests reading a book as you brush your teeth—book in one hand and toothbrush in the other so that you aren’t “wasting time.”

There’s a current movement afoot that is gaining popularity and is a backlash against the pressure to always be productive—slow living. Slow living’s philosophy tells us that someti…