Tag Archive | writing

The Writing

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So, this is my journal. And my pink pen. Which will be replaced with another color when it runs out. I eschew blue and black when it comes to non-work/school things. I buy pens by the huge package and pass out the boring colors to my kids. I also won’t write with orange or lime green, because it’s too hard to read what I have written later. That was called a tangent.

So, writing. First, the journal itself. That’s 340 pages there, and I intend to fill it up this year. I’ve started journaling at night for a couple of reasons. 1) I try to meditate in the morning now. 2) I have 8am classes again this semester, and I discovered last semester that if I have the intent to journal in the morning and don’t get to it before I leave the house, then I don’t get it done at all. I didn’t even fill up a 100 page notebook from May to December of last year. That’s pretty damning for a gal who once had a three page a day habit. 3) I have some crazy-ass mornings, even when I don’t have 8am classes. It’s the nature of being mom to the masses, and if something CAN go wrong here, it is going to happen before I have had my coffee. 4) At night, I can reflect on the day and make a list of things for which I am grateful. Ergo, night journaling, and it’s working so far.

Obviously, I’m blogging. Woohoo, because I have missed it. I think I mentioned that I was doing Jeff Goins’ My 500 Words challenge?? So far, the blogging has filled that quota for me. I don’t expect that will be the case for the year, and probably not even for the rest of this month. But it’s giving me an attainable goal, and I like that. At this point, I’m planning to keep going with that all year, whether he continues the challenge or not.

I’m still writing poems now and again, whenever inspiration strikes. Lately, it’s been haikus. It is more difficult than you’d think to get your point across in 5/7/5 syllables. It’s also pretty dang satisfying. When I pare down to that, I know I have not wasted any space at all either on the page or in your head.

I also have a book in progress that I am writing with a partner. We started it during November for NaNoWriMo, and hit about 13,000 words each. Then we were both affected by the same set of circumstances, and the writing mojo withered. It’s been difficult to get back to it. I think there are several things going on there. I think there is the onus of failure, even though we talked it over and agreed that what was going on apart from the book was more important, vastly more important, than the work of the book and that we needed to focus on the other thing. And then, too, I think the book now reminds me of the other thing, and I don’t like the other thing, so I avoid the book. (Yes, the other thing is still going on.) And finally, there is just the loss of momentum. We were tearing that shit UP. It was on, and it was hot, and it was shaping up to be everything we had planned for it to be. And then it stopped. Like a bus hitting a wall and ending up the size of a smart car. BAM. Now we need to unfold the bus, try to smooth it back out and climb back in. That’s tough. But I’m publicly committing to getting back to the book, because it’s a good story, and it needs to be written, and we need to write it. And I can do 500 words, if I will just do it.

See, here I am at just over 600 and it took less than 20 minutes. So. Doable. Yes, I have switched over. I am now giving myself a pep talk. I should stop. I’ve said all I need to say to an audience, and now I just need to do the work. Oh, that’s always the rub, isn’t it? Just doing the work. Reminds me of what I journaled last night: if I don’t like my reality, instead of distracting myself to escape it, I can just change the reality. Sometimes I give myself some good advice!