*Writers — Gifts for Yourself

Dawn Ulmer
Dancing Elephants Press
3 min readDec 20, 2023

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What would make YOU happy?

Photo by Olga Safronova on Unsplash

As many rush here and there purchasing gifts, wrapping them and getting them ready for their holiday celebration, do you notice how frazzled you feel? You remember everyone else but forget YOU.

Below are some possible gift-giving ideas that you can gift YOURSELF. These idea may help you slow down and enJOY the season even more than you do:

Purchase a special pen you can use. We always need a pen for jotting down that illusive idea you may have. A special pen can help remind you how special YOU are and your unique perspectives.

Go outside on a cold, starry night and look up, enjoying the peace and wonder, giving yourself some thought-space. What a gift it is to be part of the universe with your own thoughts and writing ideas!

Look back over your Medium stats and be encouraged by what you see!

Discover new ways to be more efficient in your writing endeavors — your topics, drafts and published pieces.

Purchase an over-sized calendar to plot and plan your writing submissions and to note your published pieces.

Research and begin using an alphabetizing program so you can keep track of your followers, subscribers and those who wish to be tagged in your list of readers. That list or lists will make life so much easier to navigate!

Give yourself a Friend of Medium year’s membership. We only need to earn $15–16 per month on our articles to be able to afford it! With the new earnings structure, that should be do-able.

If you are only a ‘reader’ on Medium, give yourself a gift of a Membership on Medium so that you can write, also.

Replenish your stock of paper and notebooks. Take a small notebook with you wherever you go so that you can capture any writing ideas.

Purchase a filing cabinet in which to keep your work. Whether large or small, a filing cabinet is a necessity for good organization not only of your writings but for warranties, medical paperwork and more.

Purchase some new file folders into which you can place items. Make them colorful!

Clean off your writing desk area so that it is free of dust and clutter. Attempt to keep it cleaned, adopting time and space managerment— ‘a place for everything and everything in its place’.

Devise new systems to make your workflow go more smoothly. Make it personal to fit YOUR needs.

Explore some of the sites for images so that you know which sites are easy to use with the results you like. I, personally, use Unsplash, Adobe and Midjourney.

Prepare some music playlists to enjoy while you are writing.

Find a new camera or dust off the old one in preparation for taking your own photos to add to your posts.

Update your personal ‘address book’ so all is streamlined if you need to send a card or email -that way your writing workflow isn’t interrupted more than is necessary.

Create a special file of writer’s guidelines for publications. There is no need to try to memorize each.

These are just some of the ideas that you can use to gift something to yourself.

If you have any more suggestions, please let me know in the comments. I enjoy hearing YOUR ideas.

Susie Winfield suggested: organize your digital works in progress. Create folders for your work in your Google drive or some other cloud system so you can work on pieces on your computer and on your phone.

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Gift yourself or a loved one this in paperback or ebook format.

If you would like to have your name added or deleted from my list, please let me know.

Alma Curry Doris Rouse Ken Van Camp Mary Papas Sharon Hillam Greg Smith Jemimah Susie Winfield Diana Pippin Haley K. Julie KingGood Lee Byrd Lu Skerdoo Sharon Meyers Nikita Rayne Johnson Paula Thomas SilentHarmony Diana Rose Borisuck Senetta Diane Albena Roshelova

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Dawn Ulmer
Dancing Elephants Press

CEO of myself sometimes, retired BS R.N., author of '365 Practical Devotional for Anxious Women' . Enjoys photography and writing!