Category: observations/thoughts (Page 7 of 12)

Reading Challenge (Day 6)

August 11, 2022 / / 0 Comments

I’m not sure if it’s a good idea to keep blogging about my reading challenge each day. There’s not much to say. I read some books. Two hours (give or take). The end.

Maybe if I was finishing a book every other day or so, but I’m not a fast reader, so I’ll be reading Pachinko and The Door to Saturn for several more weeks at least.

I did start a new book today: 100 Essays I Don’t Have Time to Write by Sarah Ruhl. Good so far, but I only read the first essay. Very relatable. Ruhl is a playwright and mother of three kids. I too am the mother of three kids who writes stuff. So, yeah, it’s in my wheelhouse.

But really, what more is there to say about my reading today? Not much.

The reading challenge posts are good because they make me blog everyday, but I’m not sure the “reading” part should be emphasized as much, unless I read something that I want to review or whatever. The “challenge” part can be emphasized, I guess, if I ever had anything insightful to say about sticking with or completing a challenge, but alas, I can’t even go five days without flaking out.

I do like blogging everyday, so maybe I mention the challenge in my daily blog posts but don’t make a big deal out of it.  The book-reading challenge is still a thing, just chillin’ in the background.

I will say, James Clear’s book for developing daily habits is still the best thing I’ve read on forming habits, and even though I failed to meet my challenge yesterday, knowing that all I needed to do was accept it and make sure not to miss two days in a row was enough to get me motivated again. In the past, when I would miss doing something I promised to do daily (i.e.: not say my Lenten rosary), I would beat myself up about it. I would get ridiculously discouraged, and basically, give up on the whole thing.

Clear’s advice — to just let yourself miss that day and make sure not to miss more than two in a row — was mind-altering. Here was a productivity guru guy telling me it was okay to miss a day, that it didn’t mean I was a failure, and all I needed to do was just make sure to get back to my habit the next day. It sounds so obvious, but Clear gave me permission to accept that sometimes I would mess up, and messing up doesn’t mean the habit is destroyed. Also, better to read for five minutes if that’s all you can do than to not read anything because you didn’t have the perfect two hours of reading time all laid out.

I’ve learned this lesson with my writing too. I wish I could write for four hours a day, but realistically, that doesn’t ever happen. Instead, I write when I can with the time that is given to me. I try to keep my regular morning writing time, but even if I don’t, one sentence in my manuscript is better than none. Amazingly, one sentence every day can add up to a novel.

(Luckily, I’m able to write more than one sentence a day… most days!)

Guilty/Not Guilty

July 16, 2022 / / 0 Comments

I sat down to work on my fiction this morning, but I ended up doing a lot of writing in my notebook instead. Some fragments/thoughts about the morning walk with my daughter (something that’s becoming our daily ritual), some thoughts about plot structures (and the manuscript I am editing for a client), some thoughts about my own works in progress and what plot structures they follow, and then I took a bunch of notes on the Michael Moorcock system for writing a novel in three days.

I’d read about Moorcock’s system before, but today I felt like copying it down into my writer’s notebook so I could internalize it. Not that I’m planning to write a novel in three days, but I appreciate the way Moorcock breaks down how to structure and think about narrative. I especially love his idea of generating a list of fantastical images that employ paradox as a way to make something memorable and interesting (ex. “The City of Screaming Statues”).

Anyway, I didn’t work on my fiction at all during my morning “writing time.” There’s a part of me that says, “Wasted time!” and beats myself up for not adding words to my manuscript. But there’s the other part of me — the idler and reveler — who thinks mucking about in the notebook is both fun and necessary to my creative life. All the things I wrote in the notebook will help me later on — whether it’s later today or tomorrow or next week — giving me food for thought regarding my fiction work. Not “productive” in the strictest sense, but productive nevertheless. Sometimes I need to approach my writing “sideways” — not head-on but through the alleyways of my writer’s notebook. These alleys and byways set the stage for my later productivity in the manuscript. So it feels like I’m slacking, but really, I’m turning over the compost heap and making the fertilizer.

Notebook Fragment

July 15, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Even now, I still worry that I’m being followed by the bee. It’s in my hair, just waiting to come out.

(This fragment was occasioned by the morning walk I took with my daughter. A bee or strange fly followed us from our driveway all around the block, past the wild blackberry bushes, around the school yard, and even down the sidewalk as we ran furiously from it. It kept wanting to nest in our hair. Maybe it liked our shampoo. To get back into the house, I lured the bee into the backyard while my daughter dashed through the front door. Then, she opened the sliding glass door in the back and I rushed in. Despite being inside again for two hours, I keep thinking the bee is with me.)

No More Vacation

July 12, 2022 / / 0 Comments

Since summer began, I feel like I’ve been busier than ever. Should summer be this busy? When I retired from teaching in June, I hadn’t realized that I would need to start work right away, and that my usual “summer vacation” was a thing of the past. How foolish! Of course I’ll have to work in summer from now on, and not just work on my fiction, but work on my freelance career. Summers will be like any other season.

But perhaps this summer has been busier than I expected simply because I’m not used to it, and once I get used to the rhythm of my new work life, I’ll find summers can still be a respite from the hurly-burly. Maybe. It’s all uncharted territory, isn’t it?

I think that’s what’s making this summer so stressful: I’m in uncharted territory. I’m fearful. I’m worried. Maybe I’m not actually that much busier than normal, it’s just that everything has taken on an added weight of importance. No longer is freelance editing something I do on the side; now, it’s something I must do to eat and pay the mortgage. Summer’s freedom is weighed down by this new responsibility. Perhaps, after a few months, this uncharted feeling will abate. I hope. I guess even if it doesn’t, I’ll get used to it. I don’t want to trade this new adventure for my old way of life, but I do have to start accepting that being on an adventure means a lot of discomfort. Like Bilbo going out his door with Gandalf and the dwarves. There’s that tension between the comfort of Bag End and the excitement (and fear) of the open road. I want both, just as Bilbo did.

Figuring out a daily schedule has been the hardest part. Between summer school for my eldest, and swimming lessons, and birthday parties, and fireworks, and all the rest of the summer stuff, I haven’t been able to find four or five hours each day to get my work done. Every day is different, every day is a jumble of activities. I need to figure out how to settle things down and find a schedule that works. I suppose this trial and error is part of the adventure too.

Daily Blogging?

July 8, 2022 / / 3 Comments

Can I get back to daily blogging? Would it be worth it? There’s a part of me that thinks, “What’s the point?” since nobody really reads my website, and the time devoted to daily blogging might be better spent elsewhere (like soliciting new editing clients…), but then I think about the joy I get from hitting “publish” and seeing my blog post go live to the world. Sure, nobody will read it (except my husband, maybe), but there’s something satisfying about being able to write a few thoughts, ramble a bit without any direction, and then hit publish.

I have loved the act of blogging since I first discovered it more than fifteen years ago. I have always preferred blogs to any of the other social media that have sprung up afterwards. Yes, I do have a newsletter (I’m on Substack like everyone else), but the blog is a different kind of space. It’s more intimate, somehow. And it’s a lot more like a playground. I’m just doing whatever, no pressure or purpose other than to muck around. I’m not doing this blog to make money; no monetizing or ads or anything like that. I just want to write and explore and post it for other people to see. Even if no one sees.

Maybe daily blogging wouldn’t be worth it. Maybe I should be doing something else, something more “productive.” There’s an argument to be made that I should spend these fifteen or twenty minutes a day working on my fiction instead. That’s probably the most persuasive argument against daily blogging. I love to write fiction, and I should always be doing more of it if I can. I have novels and series that need finishing. I have readers who are waiting for new books.

But—

As much as I love writing fiction, blogging uses a different part of my brain, a different writing muscle, and I want to use that muscle. Blogging has a way of helping me with my fiction. It gives me a chance to get words down on paper, to open the floodgates so to speak, so that all of my writing — fiction, nonfiction, journaling, copy writing — becomes easier. There’s this weird phenomenon where words beget more words, and more words beget even more words, and if I’m writing on the blog, suddenly I’m writing more fiction, and if I’m writing more fiction, I suddenly have words I want to add to the blog. Instead of the blog taking away from my other writing, it almost ends up feeding it.

Time, of course, is the most precious commodity, and there will be days when I don’t have enough time to let all the words out that I have bubbling up inside, and so I guess on those days, one type of writing will be sacrificed for the other. Maybe some days I only blog or I only write fiction. But I gave up my teaching job precisely so I could have more time for writing, and even though time is still scarce (I have young children, after all), I have more freedom now to use my time as I will. Even if it’s just for five minutes, I can use that time for blogging.

It’s not really the time that matters anyway. It’s the desire, the will to do it. If I say I want to blog everyday, then I can do it. If I say I want to write fiction every day, then I can do it. Even one minute is enough.

I think that’s why I want to start blogging again. It’s another way to write, another way to get words on the page. And words beget more words, and more words, and more words. For a writer, that’s a good thing.

Rule 8

December 27, 2021 / / 0 Comments

I’ve loved Sr. Corita Kent’s “Rules” for Immaculate Heart College’s art department since seeing them on Austin Kleon’s blog, but of all the rules, Rule 8 wasn’t one that stuck with me. I am much more a Rule 9 and Helpful Hints kinda gal, but the other day I was thinking about the difference between reading a book and writing a book, and I thought of Rule 8: “Don’t try to create and analyze at the same time. They’re different processes.” First, I’m not saying that reading a book is the same thing as analyzing it… but maybe I am? We tend to define analysis as this super-serious and intellectual thing, but at its heart, analysis is to study something with care, to look closely, to learn the nature of something. When we read deeply, are we not doing this? When we delve into a book (not just skim it or run across it like basilisk lizards), aren’t we looking closely? Aren’t we trying to learn the nature of the story, of the ideas, of the author who gave voice to its words?

Rule 8 feels like another way of saying that when we take something in, it’s a different process than putting something out into the world. When I read, I’m looking closely at something that is outside myself: I’m taking it in.

When I write, I’m releasing something from within: I’m letting it out.

And these two processes must be different, though related. I can’t be looking closely at something and studying it with care if I’m in the midst of releasing it. My eye is directed inward when I am creating. It’s only once the thing has been released that my mind’s eye can be directed outward. But it’s the cycle between these two visions that Rule 8 is hinting at. It’s not one or the other: it’s not all creating or all analyzing all the time. It’s creating: putting things out into the world. And then it is analyzing: taking things in from the world. Or vice versa. Not sure it matters which comes first, the creating or analyzing. But it’s the interplay between the two, the cycle. That is what matters. We just have to remember to not try to do both at the same time. We can’t steep the tea and drink it at the same time.

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