BABY STEPS...

 

…ONE FOOT IN FRONT OF THE OTHER 👣

 

Notes to self:

1.      Just take one step.

2.      Then, another

3.      Start somewhere. Everyone does

4.      The only way to get anywhere is to take the first step.

 

“But it will take forever…”

5.      “Forever” is a very long time. Don’t think about “forever.”

6.      Back to one foot in front of the other.

7.      Pat on the back 🙆🏻‍♀️

8.      …And back for another step tomorrow

 

WE TEND TO FORGET THAT EVEN BABY STEPS WILL MOVE US FORWARD

DO SOMETHING TODAY YOUR TOMORROW WILL THANK YOU FOR

 

^GOOD ADVICE TO LIVE BY^

During my less self-scheduled days, I find myself tempted by a sense of laziness to put off what I could do but don’t have to.

 

“I can always do it tomorrow or the next day.”

“Who says I should? No one will notice either way.”

“It makes no difference to anyone.”

“I don’t feel like it.”

“I really don’t feel like it.”

 

All the above are dialogues with self.

 

This is what I have discovered over the last years: I am happier having done rather than not done. At the end of the day, and also the next day, this reward is worth more than I previously realized. At the end of the week, or the month, or the year, there’s a more contented me for having done what needed to be done as soon as I could instead of as late as I could.

 

Just a pep-talk to self here, which you are welcome to borrow. 😉

The Faulty Concept of WRITERS’ RETREATS

 

Years ago, I was asked by a good friend (not a writer or artist) if I had a writing retreat I go to in order to, what else, write.

 

I laughed because this was not in the budget and in no way part of my lifestyle. I was a mother of young children who were never in daycare or even had a babysitter. There was no place for sequestering on a retreat, period.

 

There still isn’t. I write where I live. I write from my real life. My creative life is part of my daily life. The very notion of retreats is to separate from one’s life/work/dear ones, and to dis-connect. Un-connect. It’s about disrupting connectivity.

 

I don’t get it, and likely never will.

 

I chuck it to romantic notions emanating from another age. Today, these so-called retreats are commercial enterprises and, frankly, an abuse of true creative reality. There’s a whole industry of these retreats and it’s booming.

 

If you want to take a break from the hustle-bustle, by all means do. Call it a vacation. Call it a break. Let’s not wrap breaking from real life a “creative retreat.”

 

I’d love a nice vacation. If I go, I will not be writing but reclining and sipping a delicious beverage with my feet up.

 

Writing is real work.

DEADLINES SET BY OTHERS

 

One of the pitfalls of staying in school for many years is the dependence on deadlines set by others.

 

What, you might be saying, is wrong with that? It’s a preparation for work life in general and makes John and Jill good boys and girls. Right?

 

But here’s my take. It also creates a dependence on others to get things done.

I know writers who sign up for writing challenges and join groups that insist on certain timed output. I know musicians who need competitions to get them going on learning new repertoire and practice . I know painters who need a set exhibit date to complete a set number of new works, etc.

 

Without this external pacing, many people just fall apart and lose the map. The trail becomes blurry and a sense of being lost takes over only to deepen unless they latch on to yet another organizer who gives them deadlines once again.

 

I have come to see it differently. It took reaching my late twenties before I got that monkey off my back. I learned what pace works for me and why only this way of working sets me free.

 

Sure, I meet deadlines all the time. But I don’t need them to create.

 

You won’t find me anywhere near NaNoWriMo or the 12 by12 challenge and their ilk. Maybe because I didn’t stay in school as long as many I know, I don’t need this sort of assigned homework. Life tells me when I’m needed, and I tell my days what I need from them in return.

KEEPING TRACK OF THE DAYS

 

©Brian Crane

 

One of my sanity-keeping strategies is to not let go of my old routines even when external forces no longer necessitate them.

When I became a full-time mom, I relegated my writing to the rhythm of my kids’ school year. That meant I took summers off. I began plotting a new Middle Grade in September, with a first draft start date no later than October first, and a second draft no later than February first.

My writing days were also set, with weekends relegated to critiquing other writers’ work and drafting blog posts, such as this one.

School vacations were my days off, too. The summer was re-charge time, with the creative engines beginning to rev up in August. I jotted notes for ideas, but stayed off the first drafting table while Camp Mama was active and I was running it.

I no longer have kids at home, and my cats don’t care that it’s summer. But I keep to my established routines because they have worked well for me. I never did NaNoWriMo* because I don’t need it. I have my own novel writing month(s), and I don’t let myself off the hook just because I can.

*National Novel Writing Month= November

In truth, I always could just not do it if I didn’t feel like it. But I understood this notion to be the enemy of the creative spirit. It’s not what do I feel like today, but rather— today’s Tuesday and so this is what I will feel.

Oddly, this isn’t confining; it’s liberating. There’s plenty of time for spontaneity and variety when the day’s work is done, and the work itself shapes a kind of internal liberation. 

It’s cutting off the chains of ennui and touching the light of yes, we can.

The Last Few Months

A writer friend reminded me that as different as these last few months have been, for many of us they were more the same as the pre-pandemic world.

Because books are books, and stories are stories, and the things that matter are very much the same.

But the publishing world is trying to access what is different, not what is as before. As they do so, those of us who want to be published are swinging in the breeze of changing winds.

To that end, I’d love to hear from others. Have you found that you are reading/watching differently? Have your book-buying habits changed? If you could rule the publishing world, what do you wish you could find on virtual shelves?

Maybe the most surprising thing, for me, is that at the height of the rapid closures and public tension I found it hard to focus on reading or writing original stories. But shortly after, (shortly here means about eight weeks) the ability to be a reader and also a writer returned with aplomb. What about you?

Fear of Unfinished Projects

I have a fear of unfinished projects.

It could have started with a rather ambitious project that, in hindsight, turned into a traumatic event. I was four years old when my mother discovered that all of her feminine napkins disappeared. Two packages, which she discovered an hour later in tatters, cut into various shapes.

“What is this?” she gasped. “Did you do it?”

“I am making an airplane,” I explained. It made sense to me. The feminine napkins had one side colored a lovely pink, which I thought made perfect, lovely, fluffy seats.

“You are making what? With what?” she said. Actually, she screamed.

I never made that airplane. My mother’s yelling knocked the air out from beneath my wings.

Many other creative bursts that went nowhere followed. At the age of twelve, filled with nascent romantic notions, a friend who lived about a five minute walk away wound up staying until midnight as we feverishly “made a book” using pop song lyrics and magazine cutouts for each page. It was so much fun she forgot to call her parents and let them know where she was. We vowed to continue our book the next day, and she again forgot to tell me that her parents grounded her when she appeared at the door so many hours after they alarmed everyone they knew including the police. That book of romantic song lyrics was never finished.

I had creative bursts that left feverishly begun and then abandoned projects throughout my teens and twenties. I was twenty-eight before I figured how to work.  

For me, it entailed a solemn vow to not begin something until I finished the last thing.

When writing, “finishing” is never final and done. But to me it means the first draft is written, then a second draft, and then at least one beta reader gave feedback and I revised again. That makes three drafts. After that, a story may sit in the digital drawer or go on to many drafts and revisions. But every manuscript, short or long, will include a typed last line, THE END.

This deal I made with myself has saved me from starting what I couldn’t or wouldn’t finish, and from hundreds of begun-but-orphaned roads to nowhere.

©Doogie Horner

Going for a Hike

When I read that a writer revised a novel sixty-four or a hundred-and-eleven times, I am not awed. I'm baffled.

Tackling a revision is like going for a hike.

First draft, for those of us who are planners, is like going for a hike to an unknown place but using a map. Pantsters (those who write by the seat of their pants, no outline) are hiking to unknown places without a map. Pantsters have only a vague sense of where they must end, which is some variation of home, be it a mental or emotional state for the main character or the plot coming to a place of equilibrium.

I always work on the first and second draft alone, and it’s the closest I come to hiking without a map. By the second draft I already know the trail (=first draft) but now I must see if this was a good, satisfying hike. Before anyone else’s feedback, I’m not clear how to asses. So I made some standard questions I ask myself as I go.

Theme?

Consistent voice?

Foreshadowing?

End that echoes the beginning?

Now it’s time to have others join me; Beta readers, whose feedback is invaluable. Their specific comments become the trail map for the next outing= the third draft. I find it much easier to revise to specific feedback. It is like hiking with specific places to pass on the way.

Revising is also akin to hiking in that after many rounds you stop seeing much of the road. It just goes by with nary a single detail noted. This is why my process stops at the fifth or sixth draft. For me, there's a point where I no longer see what a reader would, and that's where I'm done. I’m always ready to go back after some time has passed, or an acquired manuscript gets new eyes to guide it. But on my own, it’s a five-six times trek.

Because writing, like hiking, is an effort that should reveal and enhance, not suck the life out of the traveler. 

DO I HAVE TO?

If you’ve read this blog before, you know how I rail against the standard/daylight savings time change. You must be saying “’nuff already,” and “there she goes again,” and “there are much worse things, so grow up.”

Only this time I am not pleading for me. Take pity on my cats.

You see, they don’t read digital clocks, (though one of them, I swear, can read the analogue kind. She will stare at it for hours until it’s feeding time) so just pointing at the clock and saying “not yet” has no effect.

Try telling Ms. Nougat that I have one more hour to sleep. She’ll pretend to be polite for a few minutes, and then graduate to jumping and attacking the quilt and finally-- me.

Try telling Miss Clara her seven/thirteen/seventeen/twenty O’clock (think army times) feedings are not yet/not yet/not yet/not yet, and see how far that gets you.

I know, change is good. Change is a mini-vacation. In fact, why would anyone who lives in a nice place and a beautiful location schlep to a vacation? For the change, of course.
As hard as I try to convince myself these forced time changes are vacations, I can’t convince my cats.

©The New Yorker cartoons IB PG

And then, when I finally succeed, we have to do it all over again in spring.

Take pity. If not on me, then on the cats.

Ms. Nougat: “Sorry, the old seven just doesn’t feel like itself. Glad you’re up even if you prefer to still be tucked in. See how nice it is to be up an hour early? I’m on top of it, literally.”

Writerly Routines

Most folks have routines that get them going no matter what sort of work they do.

Most writers I know, or know of, do their creative work in the morning. If writing is in addition to their day job, this means very early morning.

No matter when or what, routines help. It’s unglamorous. Admitting that you don’t write drunk into the wee hours of the night with existential despair as page after page is scrapped because you won’t give up until you have something--- doesn't sound arty.
(Oh-so very unlike Dashiell Hammett, at least as depicted in Lillian Hellman’s Pentimento.)

Most writers have a set routine and write no matter where inspiration chooses to dwell any given day. Most workers go to work no matter how enthusiastic they feel at a particular moment. Same thing.

© Luci Gutierrez for the New Yorker

My morning routine is as uninspiring as it is grounding. With small necessary adjustments, it generally goes something like this:

*Woken up by Nougat, one of my three cats. She thinks she’s an alarm clock.

*Thanking her, and thanking G-d for returning my soul to me. It’s a Jewish prayer that sets the day right.

*Making my bed. The other cats come in to help, with great merriment for all.

*Cleaning litter boxes, changing water bowls, filling the food bowls. Felines have priority because of all their help.

*Making strong tea with foamy milk. Drinking it, doing my best to keep cats off the foam.

*A short meditation. It’s supposed to be quiet time, but the cats determine this as well.

*Turn on the computer. Open WORD.

*I’m ON IT.

Two hours or so later, DH gets up and the rest of the day commences. That means coffee, breakfast, and the busy-busy stuff.

Do you have routines to get going?