Category: writers notebook (Page 3 of 4)

Why I Blog, Reason #17

March 15, 2021 / / 0 Comments

My daily blogging has taken a hit lately. Part of that is due to being more focused on my fiction stuff at the moment. When I only have 40 minutes each day to devote to writing, those minutes are better spent working on my stories and novels. The cool news is that I finished “The Wind Masters,” I’m almost finished with “Things” (which is being re-titled “Berserker” or “A Good Defeat,” not sure yet), and I’ve written several chapters for my novella, Avalon Summer, and two chapters of a new novel (The Gates of Illvelion). I’m just writing what feels right, so each night I sit down and see where my subconscious takes me.

I do miss blogging though. It’s nice to write my thoughts and see where my mind wanders. The process for the blog is that I usually steal stuff from my writer’s notebook and type it up here, maybe adding or tweaking a bit. But generally, I start with my notebook and then formalize or expand on those thoughts here on the blog.

Sometimes, however, I just craft a blog post without any previous drafting or anything. That’s what this post is. Just me writing random stuff. Sitting down with the WordPress dashboard open and typing away. I’m not sure what the point of this post is; there is no point, really. But I’m old school, and that means I think of this blog more as my personal space than as some kind of marketing thing or whatever. I’m not trying to get “traffic.” Maybe I should be, but I’m not.

(Note: This wasn’t always the case. Early on, when I first set up the website, I thought the blog should be some kind of marketing or “branding” thing and I tried to fit my writing into that model. After struggling to add “content” and finding the whole thing burdensome, I gave up that approach. When I restarted blogging these past few years, I did so with the intent to write more personally, more randomly, and more authentically. Thus you get blog posts like this one, which are little more than idle thoughts.)

Is it self-indulgent to write all these random thoughts and ideas? Perhaps. I mean, if I’m not writing for some specific audience, or about some specific topic, then one may ask, “What’s the point?”

But I’d like to think that if — on some off chance — someone stumbles onto my blog, they might find solidarity or comfort or interest in my odd ramblings. Maybe this hypothetical reader is also a struggling writer, and maybe this hypothetical person might enjoy reading about my travails and ups-and-downs and whatnot. Or maybe they like the blog posts about the different writing exercises I use in my classroom. Or maybe they like to laugh at my poetry. Who knows.

I don’t really write for anyone, though. Just myself.

Saturday Things

February 6, 2021 / / 0 Comments

I got my first dose of the Moderna Covid-19 vaccine today. So far: soreness in arm, moderately bad headache, and fatigue. Otherwise, feeling okay.

My current project is a short story called, tentatively, “Things.” (Yes, I know. The title is completely un-evocative. It basically means nothing. However, there is a story-related reason why it’s called “Things,” but I realize that as titles go, it doesn’t grab anyone’s attention. So it’s a working title that will probably change once I’m done.)

I wanted to read a few hard-boiled short stories and watch a couple of films noir to get in the mood, but honestly, it’s been hard to find the time for any of that. I can watch certain old movies when my kids are around — musicals are usually safe, as are silent and screwball comedies — but film noir is one of those genres that is not appropriate for the under-six set.

Anyway, I watched so many films noir in my twenties and early thirties that I could recite many of them line-by-line, so it’s not like I don’t know the style and mood of these kinds of stories. But just for fun, I wanted to dive back in and reacquaint myself with these old friends. Maybe there’s still time. . . I’m only half-way finished with the story.  “Things” is one of those stories where I pretty much know the ending already, but I’m not sure yet how I’m going to get there or what it’s going to look like when I do. It’s a bit like knowing there’s going to be a car wreck, but not knowing how the bodies are going to end up. (Sorry, that was a morbid analogy!)

Today was also a great day because I made it through a week of using my new “habit schedule,” and so far, it’s been successful. Each day this week I’ve managed to carve out time to pray in the morning and before bed, read something spiritual (current books are the Pope’s new one and The Imitation of Christ), write in my writer’s notebook, read a book at lunchtime, enter grades/provide feedback to students, work on freelance editing stuff, exercise, stretch, and write something creative (either fiction or this blog). My not-every-day-but-a-few-times-a-week habits — doing some light cleaning, paying bills, and filing papers — were also a success.

I will say the methods outlined in James Clear’s Atomic Habits have been very helpful in this regard, particularly his advice to “make it easy” and “make it satisfying.” I use a habit tracker app on my phone (that’s the “make it satisfying” part), and I’ve rearranged a few things to make the habits easier.

For instance, before I go to bed at night, I make sure my writer’s notebook is sitting on the dining room table so that in the morning it’s ready for me to write in as I eat my breakfast. Another example of making it “easy” is that I put Swiffer dusters in various rooms around the house so I can just pick one up and start dusting if I have a spare moment. And finally, I set a daily alarm on my phone to ring when it’s time to enter grades and do freelance work. I’ve also tried to “habit stack,” where I tie a new habit to an existing one (like the habit of writing in my notebook while I’m eating my breakfast, or reading a book while I eat my lunch).

The one habit I might need to modify is the exercise one, because I used to exercise before I took my shower, but that made mornings too hectic, so I switched exercise to the afternoon, when I get home from work. However, that get-home-from-work time is quite busy too — the kids are excited to see me, I’ve got to change out of my work clothes and clean my lunch containers, start to prepare dinner, etc. — so my exercise time has been shorter than usual everyday this week (I’ve been breaking the “make it easy” rule). Maybe I need to move the exercise back to the morning and do it before my shower. . . (I hesitate to do this, though, because that means getting up earlier, and I’m already struggling to get up at 7:00 a.m.; 6:45 a.m. might be a bridge too far.)

Despite these few hiccups, I’m utterly pleased with how much I was able to get done this week, and with how much less stress I’ve had. I’m not particularly strict about my habit schedule as far as doing things at a very specific time, but I’ve found that having an outline for the day has given my life a pleasant rhythm. I know that I want to accomplish these various “little things,” and by doing them each day in small chunks, and at generally the same time each day, I’ve been able to accomplish quite a bit, even in just a week’s time.

Wide-Open Saturday

January 23, 2021 / / 0 Comments

Today was one of those days where I had lots of plans — lots of stuff was gonna get done — and instead, I did practically nothing. I went to the grocery store; that was my big accomplishment. Also, I made some homemade hummus. Otherwise, all the essays I was going to critique, all the fiction I was going to write, all the editing work I was going to do: Nada.

I did manage to read a bit. I wrote in my notebook. But these little things — the reading, the notebooking, the hummus-making, the grocery shopping — they don’t add up to much. I know they’re good things to do, I’m glad I was able to do them, but they feel small. And today was my wide-open Saturday! The day my kids spend with Grandma and Grandpa. It was *the* time to Get Things Done. Instead, I did little things. Good things, important things, but little things. The “big things” — the projects, the assignments, the teaching and freelancing work — none of them fit into the day. Instead, I wrote a few pages in my notebook, ate breakfast with my kids, read some of Pope Francis’s new book, watched TV with my husband, made hummus, went shopping, went to mass, came home and ate dinner. A good day, and yet… and yet…

I don’t know. Maybe it was a good day, full stop. No regrets for the big things I didn’t get done. Maybe the expectation that I should use my “wide-open Saturday” to do “important” work is a misguided expectation. Is it really wrong to spend my free time with my husband, or make some homemade food to feed my family, or go shopping for groceries, or go to mass and worship God (the most important thing I’ll do all  week), or read a book, or just relax? The projects and assignments are still looming, and I’ll have to do them eventually, but for this one day, this one Saturday, the little things were worth it.

Poem #9

January 20, 2021 / / 0 Comments

I gave my students a prompt today for our “writing workshop.” It was as follows: “Write a list poem using only CONCRETE NOUNS. Make the title an abstract word such as: Compassion, Jealousy, Envy, Wisdom, etc.”

Since I believe it’s important that I share in the work my students do (especially when that work is writing), here is my poem. Not sure if I like it, but in the spirit of “show your work,” I’m sharing.

 

Time

Bed sheets.

Pillow.

Alarm clock.

Pillow.

Cat claws.

Coffee cup.

Soap.

Boots.

Mittens.

Rosary beads.

Notebook.

Sticky notes.

Screens.

Screens.

Screens.

Bells.

Diet Pepsi.

Peanut butter.

Steering wheel.

Dinosaurs.

Crayons.

Toothbrushes.

Books.

Binkies.

Kisses.

Tears.

Hugs.

Nightlights.

Dishwater.

T.V.

Vitamins.

Books.

Bed sheets.

Pillow.

Pillow.

Pillow.

Random Tables

January 18, 2021 / / 0 Comments

I’ve been stuck in a mire with my fiction writing lately. I’m almost finished with a short story, “The Wind Masters,” and I’ve started another story called “Things” (that’s a working title), but my imagination has been pretty dry recently. It’s been hard to conjure images in my mind.

So I’ve decided to practice a new habit: Creativity Hour. I’m pretty sure this comes from James Scott Bell in his book on plot structure; the basic idea is that a writer should spend some dedicated time each week coming up with ideas.

A few months ago, I made a list of activities that could help me with generating ideas and images (I’m like C.S. Lewis in that way: I start with a picture in my mind), and then when it’s “Creativity Hour” time, I can pick an activity or two to do for about an hour.

I usually work in my writer’s notebook for these sessions. Sometimes I’ll listen to evocative music and write down the images that come to mind. Sometimes I’ll do a “Try Ten” and makes lists. Other times I’ll just free-write, or ask myself, “What do I want to write about right now?” I might also look at cool artwork and get ideas from the images.

Today I tried using random tables from some of my RPG books to generate ideas. The fantastic Dungeon Alphabet, the Monster Alphabet, issue #2 of the Wormskin zine, the Lazy DM’s Cheat Sheet. After about 30 minutes of messing around, I ended up on the psychedelics table in Wormskin, and then the ideas started to flow. I thought about scenes for my Norse-inspired story, “Things,” and started the seedlings of other stories and characters (one that I particularly like is a dragon with piercing white eyes without pupils).

Anyway, it was neat seeing how these random tables for role-playing games could be used to inspire my fiction. I’m not particularly interested in using my homebrew DCC RPG campaign as fodder for a novel or anything; instead, it’s more about the randomness of the tables being a nice way to challenge my imagination, improvising and mixing together disparate elements. The randomness opens up my imagination, makes me think: How can I fit this into my current work-in-progress? How can I use this to tell a *new* story? How can I combine these two seemingly unrelated things into something whole?

Random tables serve as a kind of tonic for the imagination. They can give a jolt of energy to an over-tired, dulled mind.

Boredom

January 12, 2021 / / 1 Comment

The only way to become excellent is to be endlessly fascinated by doing the same thing over and over. You have to fall in love with boredom.

James Clear, Atomic Habits (p. 236)

I’m always blathering about practice, practice, practice. My students are probably sick of hearing me wax on about how “even professional musicians practice their scales,” or how basketball players “can never do too many free throws.” But even if they’re sick of my blathering, I’m not gonna abandon my mantra: writers have to write. And the only way to get better is to practice, to form the habit, to do the work everyday.

Often, when I conference with my students individually, I hear them express a sincere desire to get better at writing. But when I give them daily opportunities to write in their writer’s notebooks, many of them don’t seize the opportunity. They do other work. Some of them read a book (which I always encourage), while others try to get caught up on their homework (which I always discourage; do your homework at home, kids!). But the same students who say they want to get better at writing don’t use the time and space I give them in class to practice their writing. The reasons are usually some flavor of “I’m not inspired!” and I quietly remind them that it’s not a good plan to wait for inspiration. Inspiration is fleeting and unpredictable. We can coax the muse by reading a lot, listening to interesting music, looking at interesting cinema, going places, paying attention, taking walks, etc., but even if we feed our muse daily, she’s a fickle creature and won’t always come out to play.

James Clear’s quote about boredom distills a lot of what I’ve been trying to help my students understand. The only way to get better at writing is by doing it OVER AND OVER. The writer’s notebook is one tool that I’ve found immensely helpful; it’s a space where I can write every day. It’s an easy method for making something habitual. Those students who have embraced their notebooks, who have used them frequently, almost daily, are the students who have seen the most growth in their writing. I’m sure they didn’t sit and wait for inspiration. They wrote in their notebooks consistently, letting the routine snowball into something habitual, and eventually that repetition and consistency paid off: they developed the skills they were hoping for.

But for the students who were always waiting for inspiration, the habit never formed. They wanted to get better at writing, but they weren’t able to “fall in love with boredom,” i.e.: the work of writing everyday, even when they were tired or didn’t have anything to write about or didn’t feel inspired.

I can relate to these students, believe it or not. For many, many, many years, I courted inspiration and only did my work when the “heat” was in me. I had a lot of cool ideas and did some good work, but NOTHING ever came from it. And yet I kept waiting for the muse to carry me off into the wild night. I kept clinging to the idea that art couldn’t be forced or mechanical, that it had to be spontaneous and passionate all the time. And so I never really finished anything worthwhile until I realized — at long last — that waiting for the muse meant waiting my whole life.

After long years and many failures, I know now that I’d much rather write every day — even if I’m not inspired and the words are dross — than to write only in fits and spurts and never make any headway. I’d much rather do the same thing over and over, because it’s in the DOING that I derive my most pleasure. And it’s also how I’ve gotten better. My ability to write didn’t materialize overnight or just by wanting it “badly enough.” It happened because I practiced, and just like the musician and basketball player, I keep practicing. Everyday.

Yes, this means “falling in love with boredom.” Boredom means pleasure… when it’s practicing something you love.

For my students who want to get better at writing, they have to find a way to fall in love with boredom too. They have to be willing to play the scales, run the reps, shoot the free throws, and put pen to paper in order to improve. It’s not glamorous or thrilling. It’s not the muse dancing under starlight. It’s about doing the work, every day. And like a miracle or a magic spell, once the habit forms, it transforms boredom into love.

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