Prompt: What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?
I do a lot of things during the course of the day that are Not Writing. Many of them are not things I want to eliminate from my life. The trick is to eliminate the duration of these activities.
I spend a lot of time on the internet. I don’t want to eliminate that entirely – the internet provides my social life, my news sources, my escape from the rest of the world, my inspirations for the things that will eventually become my writing. What I need to eliminate is the repetitions: I need to read through my Twitter feed once every half hour or so, not sit here for that whole half hour refreshing the page. I need to read the blogs in my Google Reader once or twice a day, not click on the bookmark every time my brain wanders elsewhere. I need to answer my email right away, not keep clicking back into Gmail to reread things.
But, at the beginning of that paragraph, I admitted that the internet does actually contribute to my writing. So that doesn’t really answer the prompt fully, does it? What do I do during the day that doesn’t contribute to my writing? I consider most of my life fodder for writing of some sort or another … but, the thing I wish I could eliminate, the thing that is most detrimental to my writing, is my occasionally crushing self-doubt. I get bogged down more often than I like to admit by awful thoughts; I tell myself that I’m not as good as this other person over here that I’m reading, or that nobody wants to read what I want to write, or that I’ve run out, I have no more stories to tell, that’s it. It paralyzes me too often.
So, can I eliminate the self-doubt? I don’t know. I suppose that’s one of the reasons I have a therapist. I wish I had more focus to work my way through it. Maybe that’s why I need to develop the discipline to limit my internet surfing habits. If I spend more time just writing – not taking in someone else’s writing – it will be harder for that self-doubt to slither in. Idle hands, devil’s playground, insert your favorite folk saying here. There’s always a germ of truth in cliches, isn’t there?
Today’s prompt: Encapsulate the year 2010 in one word. Explain why you’re choosing that word. Now, imagine it’s one year from today, what would you like the word to be that captures 2011 for you?
One-word answers are always really hard for me; I generally think in paragraphs and essays, for better or worse. But, as I think about it, I keep coming back to one word for 2010: nesting. In the past, I’ve always been someone who lived for the next big event, the next big trip, the next opportunity to be somewhere else. This year, though, I’ve felt more urge to be at home than ever before. In the past, that might have been construed as depression, but I honestly think that this year, I’ve been more comfortable staying in one place and not desperately searching for that next big experience that might make me seem exciting.
For 2011, then, I hope my word will be grounded. The phrase “make me seem exciting” above is indicative of how little trust I tend to have in my own sense of self. I want to know myself better by the end of the year – my true self, not the self I imagine others think me to be, not the self I think I should be in order to be liked or to be cool. I want to be more comfortable being alone with my thoughts, without needing validation from someone else. I want to feel more confident in my own opinions and choices, so that the potential disdain or judgment of others doesn’t sway me so much.
(Reverb 10 is an online event designed to help people reflect on the passing year and manifest what’s next for the new year. Check them out, and spend December gathering the right kind of vibes for 2011!)
Life has been super busy lately. This happens – social periods go in cycles, and suddenly I don’t feel like I have time to breathe. In a way, I’m happier when the busy cycles hit; I like feeling connected to people, and I like doing things that don’t revolve around sitting at home in front of my computer. Add NaNoWriMo to that (update: around 4K behind schedule, still probably won’t make 50K by the end of the month, but I’m okay with that as long as I keep writing!), and my brain is whirling full-time right now.
(And then there’s the travel – I just counted, and I’m either traveling or out of town 22 days out of the next 50! When I put it in numbers like that … wow, yeah. Busy!)
So, being busy makes me happy. It makes me feel like I’m doing something productive with my life, like I have more stories to tell. On the other hand, being this busy makes my brain kind of fuzzy – I forget some of the promises I’ve made to myself, allow myself to slide on certain things in order to “give myself a break” and other excuses like that. I’ve gotten to a point where I feel like I need focus again. I need to declare some concrete intentions in various areas of my life.
- Writing: I actually feel like I have this one under control. I’ve developed a writing habit that I’m happy with; I write nearly every day, and I’m comfortably producing a good number of words at each sitting. (NaNoWriMo output is necessarily huge; outside of November, I’ve been easily writing 500-1000 words most times I sit down to write, which is good enough for me!) I’m working on a novel project right now that still interests me, even when I’m frustrated and blocked. I have a couple of other projects brewing in my head, so if I hit a giant wall with this one, I can move on to something else. I’m fairly confident I can continue writing consistently.
- Family/Friends: This feels out of my control right now. I’m occasionally overwhelmed with stimuli, and I’m not keeping up with some people the way I want to. On the family side, I’m struggling to balance a relationship that hasn’t felt stable for several years. My intention here, then, is to pull back and look at my relationships, to figure out what energy needs to go where in order to keep myself and the people I love as healthy as possible.
- Online Life: This crosses over with the ‘Friends’ category, as so much of my social life either exists or is facilitated by the internet. So, a similar intention: I will sit down and look at the things I do online, and figure out which ones either benefit me or simply make me happy. I will try to cut out the things that do neither.
- Self-Esteem/Mental Health: I’ve been struggling on occasion recently; the lows have been pretty low, if mercifully short. My intention is to work on forgiving myself more often, and to allow myself to enjoy the things that make me happy without guilt or shame. This is probably a whole blog unto itself, but that’s enough of a statement for this purpose.
One of the things I’m going to do for my online life goals is to participate in Reverb 10!
It’s a big task, committing to post once a day for the whole month, especially with all the traveling I’m doing! But there are very few days in December when I won’t have any chance of internet access at all, and that’s probably a good reason for me to figure out how to schedule posts in WordPress, anyway. It’s a project that speaks to me, so I’m going to try!
Music of the day: still listening to My Chemical Romance. Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys came out yesterday; go pick it up, if you haven’t already! And, to tie them together with this post, a quote from guitarist Frank Iero’s blog on album release day:
We are a generation told not to try too hard. The world is going to shit, so why break a sweat? We are reminded daily not to trust our gut or follow our hearts, your dreams are unattainable and unrealistic… the band almost fell victim to this “just good enough” mentality and would have never been able to forgive ourselves. You, the fans, deserved better and us as artists deserved better.
Fear is the eternal enemy. If they can keep you scared, they can keep you controlled. We too came face to face with this saboteur, and found the strength to break through and carry on. We are here as a reminder that the world is not better off without you…these are dangerous days we live in and you, the artists, are our last defense.
Art is the Weapon.
Your Imagination is the Ammunition.
Stay Dirty, and Stay Dangerous.
Create and Destroy as you see fit.
Embrace your Originality.
The Aftermath is Secondary.
You can and should do Anything.
In conclusion friends, if you take anything away from this record, please let it be the strength to be passionate.
Love what you do and who you truly are. Be willing to die for it. If you are true to yourself, you can never go wrong. And remember when life gives you lemons, MCR says start a fucking band.
I’ve been doing NaNoWriMo again this year. The last year I attempted it – 2008 – I “won” for the first time. (I passed 50,000 words in one month. That novel isn’t exactly finished, two years later, but that’s beside the point.) I decided to try again this year despite my crazy November schedule.
Currently, with 2/3 of the month done, I’m sitting at around 28K. I’m behind by quite a bit at this point, and I won’t lie – I’ve had several thoughts of quitting this week. There are so many reasons I could use to forgive myself! I had company in town all last weekend! I’m in a wedding this coming week – in Wisconsin, so I have to travel! I’ve been out of the house a lot! I have a million other projects I’ve suddenly gotten the urge to work on! There’s nothing saying I have to win NaNoWriMo this year – and, you know, I probably won’t. The next ten days are really busy, and writing 22K in those 10 days is a big, big goal.
That doesn’t mean I’m giving up.
I spent most of this week totally discouraged about my novel. I’d written all the scenes I outlined before I started, and I was totally stuck on how to continue the story. I skipped forward to write a potential later scene, but even writing several thousand words of that didn’t give me any ideas about what to do next. I finally got a glimmer of an idea today; at the very least, I have a new scene that moves me forward by an inch or two. Today’s writing has been marginally easier than the rest of the week.
I need to remember that writing is more about those inching movements than it is about a giant flash of inspiration. Keep your ass in the chair, hands on the keyboard, type one word after another. This novel is kind of a mess right now, but at least it exists! I can fix bad scenes later, toss bits out entirely, write entirely new scenes that work a lot better. Creativity is about making messes. Better to sit down and make a bit of a mess every day than to sit and do nothing for long stretches, broken up by occasional bursts of what seems like gorgeous, divine inspiration. Messes sometimes end up being that gorgeous inspiration, if you sit back and let them simmer long enough.
Anyway. Writing continues! As does blogging!
Music of the day: My Chemical Romance’s Danger Days: The True Lives of the Fabulous Killjoys comes out on Monday. I have an advance copy (::cough:: … I’ve spent the money on a preorder, I don’t feel too bad), and I haven’t listened to anything else all week. This is an amazing pop-rock album, built around a great fictional post-apocalyptic comic book concept. As both a music lover and a tried and true geek, it’s like a marriage made in heaven for me!
Below – the video for the album’s first single, “Na Na Na”, which is an introduction to the Killjoys’ post-apocalyptic California. Super fun story telling, and a bonus appearance by comics god Grant Morrison as the bad guy!
I’ve been searching my brain for topics to blog about recently. I want to maintain this blog! I just never know what to post about. Do I want to be thoughtful? Introspective? Informative? I don’t know. Mostly, I just want to be passionate about writing something.
Anyway, tonight I was skimming through the last week or so of posts on my Twitter and Tumblr accounts, and I was finally smacked upside the head by the obvious answer. Pretty much everything I post about on my social media accounts has to do with music. Aside from writing, music is my greatest passion. I’m at the point with my writing that it’s better for me to just do it, not write about it or think too much about it, so I’m left gushing about music. So, why don’t I blog about music?
I have a private idea of what I want to post about here. I’m not going to jinx myself by telling you all about it, but let’s try to start a new habit, shall we?
To start with, how about a song recommendation?
Frank Turner is my favorite musical discovery of the last year. Most of his lyrics make me sit up in my seat and go “yes, THAT, EXACTLY THAT.” It’s like he’s writing music about me and my friends, about the things I think about and experience. On top of that, he’s brilliantly fun live. If you get the chance to see him play, do it! For now, though, you should go to iTunes and buy this song – it’s from his upcoming EP, to be released in December.
I still believe
in the need for guitar and drums and desperate poetry
and I still believe
that everyone can find a song for every time they’ve lost and every time they’ve won
So just remember folks, we’re not just saving lives, we’re saving souls and we’re having fun
… and that, I believe, is a good way to start off a new habit, don’t you think?
Why do we consider complaining to be a better way to connect with others than sharing good stories? Why am I so reluctant to celebrate life’s little victories in face-to-face conversation?
It’s a big problem of mine. It mostly stems from my giant load of Catholic guilt, I think. Talking about the good things that are happening in my life feels too much like bragging, especially when someone else around me is having a bad time. Is it okay to talk about neat experiences that someone else can’t have, or is that rubbing my good fortune in someone else’s face? I’m bad at judging another person’s mindset, so I usually err on the side of caution. So that leaves two options: talk about ideas and experiences we both share equally, or trade complaints. Since not everyone has the same experiences all the time, more often than not, I end up talking about the negative side of life.
I do hate complaining. Once again, the guilt is a problem – my life is incredibly blessed compared to other people’s lives, what do I have to complain about? That guilt keeps me silent a lot of times. But the opposite side of that guilt is irritation; when I do vent my day-to-day problems, many times the other person’s answer is to play the “I can top that” conversational game. “Oh, you had a bad day at work? Here’s how awful my day was, it was totally worse than yours.” It’s not even a conscious decision; everyone does it, even me, as much as I try not to. Again, it’s a way to connect – look, we both had awful days! We’re in the same boat! But my automatic reaction to the “mine is worse than yours” response is to clam up … I go back to “my problems aren’t bad enough to talk about, obviously, so I’ll just shut up and listen.” Which is a noble sentiment if you have it for the right reasons, but most of the time, it just makes me feel bitter.
Then, there are times when I’m excited and want to talk about it! I’m going on vacation! Something awesome happened at work! I received a great present! I was inspired by a wonderful idea! There are some people in my life I know I can be genuinely happy at and not feel guilty (hi Kate!), but for the most part, I silently question who I can celebrate life’s little victories with. I may be going on vacation, but that person is having money problems and can’t afford to go anywhere for a while. I may have gotten a great opportunity at work, but that person is stuck in a miserable situation and doesn’t currently see a way out of it. I’m inspired to write something shiny and new, but that person’s been suffering from writer’s block for weeks. Is it fair to go to those people and share my glee, or will it just rub salt in their wounds? Ideally, I’d like to think that my friends would always be happy for my victories, but I know myself, and I get bitten by the jealousy monster more often than I’d like. Envy makes me feel like a truly lousy person. Maybe, I think, I should be nice and keep the other person from feeling that lousy. So, I temper my enthusiasm, and end up getting irritated when someone else feels comfortable enough to celebrate their good day.
Obviously, most of my problems in this instance revolve around how much stock I put into other people’s opinions. One of my biggest ongoing struggles is to remind myself that my own opinion is the only one that truly matters, that other people’s negative opinions of me do not define me. I want to be more positive! I want to celebrate all my little victories, and I want to feel comfortable sharing those victories with the people around me. At the same time, though, I want to be sensitive to the problems of others and not make their potential misery any worse with careless words. Where’s the balance? How do I feel comfortable making conversation without worrying that I’m saying the wrong thing? That’s a much larger problem for me … on the topic of complaining versus happy thoughts, I need to remind myself of several things:
1) I am allowed to be happy, even if someone else is sad.
2) The reverse of the above is also true. My emotions and experiences do not have to be tied to anyone else’s.
3) Another person’s misery is not a personal attack on me. Unhappiness is not a game with points to be won. Neither is happiness.
4) It is good for me to listen to someone else’s happy thoughts or complaints without turning it back around to my own experiences.
5) If someone I’m talking to doesn’t seem to understand point #3, it doesn’t mean I have to stop talking about whatever it is that I’m feeling at that point.
There is a larger issue I’m unpacking here – the idea that my life is just as interesting and valid as anyone else’s, that I need to choose the life that makes me happy regardless of whether someone else (specific or society at large) thinks it’s a worthwhile pursuit. That’s going to take a while to get through. This is a start, though!
I’ve done these lists in other homes on the internet, so why not here? In no particular order, here are five things that are making me happy this week:
1) Deanna Raybourn’s Lady Julia Grey books – a series of Victorian mysteries that feature one of my favorite first-person narrators in a long time. My friend Michelle suggested we read the first one, Silent in the Grave, for our book club; as soon as I finished it this weekend, I went out and bought (and read) the second book. If you like historical mysteries with a liberal dash of romantic tension, I highly recommend this series!
2) So You Think You Can Dance. This is the first season I’ve watched, and I’m enthralled by the talent of all the dancers. I’ve always wanted to be a dancer, but never taken any classes – maybe that’s something for the list of adventures? For now, though, I’m living vicariously through these contestants.
3) The new Great Big Sea album, Safe Upon The Shore. GBS has been one of my all-time favorite bands since 2002 (my discovery story, if you’re so inclined), and the new CD doesn’t disappoint. It has all the Celtic-tinged folk rock they’re famous for, with a little dash of Southern flavor that came from recording their album in New Orleans. They’ll be here for the Irish Fair next month, and I can’t wait to see how the new songs sound live!
4) Yoga, for finally helping the stiff neck I’ve been sporting since sleeping in a hotel bed at the convention. I should get off my ass and do it tonight … after SYTYCD, of course.
5) The prospect of a ton of great concerts this fall! So far, we have Cowboy Mouth, Stephen Kellogg and the Sixers, fun., Ludo, Justin Townes Earle, 30 Seconds To Mars, Great Big Sea (again) … and the fall tours are just beginning to be announced! This, my friends, is where all of my disposable cash goes, in case you were wondering.
If you feel like it, tell me what’s making you happy in the comments!
I recently started reading the blog 100 Days in Bed. I recognize a lot of the emotions she’s been through; at a certain point, after enough things in your life have fallen apart, you start to feel numb to everything. I’ve spent the years since my sister’s death and my dad’s stroke on a roller coaster of numb to painfully aware to numb again to feeling so much that I couldn’t stand it. I admire anyone who chooses to ride that roller coaster publicly, for all the world to see!
The thing I like most about her approach, though, might be her adventure bowl. The thing is, my recent bout of depression has made me realize how afraid I’ve become again. I’m afraid to say things because I think my friends will think badly of me. I’m afraid to do things because they don’t fit into the neat little routine I’ve made out of my life. Yes, I do a lot of things that other people consider brave and adventurous – I drive hundreds of miles to see bands I love, I dress in costume at sci-fi conventions, I post the occasional raw emotion on the internet – but there are a lot of other things that lurk under the surface that I’m just too scared or too shy to try. The definition of ‘adventure’ is to gamble, to take a risk. For everything I do in my life right now, I have a pretty good idea what the outcome will be. Maybe it’s time to start doing more things whose outcomes are uncertain?
I’m bad at not knowing things. I had an embarrassing meltdown while finishing up our costumes for the convention a couple of weeks ago; I felt like I was the only person in our group who didn’t know how to sew or finish things, and like asking questions of those who did know amounted to bothering them, which I hated. But, how does anyone learn anything if they don’t ask for help? I hate asking for help. Somewhere along the line, my brain decided that asking for help meant admitting I wasn’t as smart as I wanted to be, and that people would stop respecting me if they knew how dumb I was. That’s a mindset I need to learn how to combat more effectively. Asking questions doesn’t make a person dumb. Pretending you know everything is much more likely to make you look stupid!
So, maybe it’s time I made my own adventure bowl. What would I put in it? That’s something to think about. I need to think about all the things that scare me, and decide which ones only scare me because I don’t know how they’d turn out.
Tell me: if you had an adventure bowl, what would you put in it?
Back again. And again. And again. What is it going to take to keep me writing over here? Because I do want to keep writing over here. I don’t want to abandon this like I’ve abandoned so much else.
I’ll be honest. It’s been a hard few weeks in my head. I can point to a bunch of little things that have probably contributed to my negative headspace, but the fact is that, for a while there, I slid back into a place I hadn’t been since last year. I don’t like that place. When I’m there, I’m paranoid and angry, and my creativity drains away. Last weekend, it affected my enjoyment of an event I look forward to all year. It sucks.
But, to look at a brighter side, the therapy and medication I started last year have both given me enough perspective to recognize that headspace for what it is, and to know, even in the darkest moments, that it will eventually pass. And it did. I took a few days to disappear into myself, and I’ve come out the other side with more energy and a lot more of my coping skills in place. Which now leaves me looking at projects I want to continue – like this blog – and wondering what I need to do to get myself back into a productive rhythm.
One day at a time, I guess. One post at a time, one morning of getting up and writing at a time. It’s the only way to get anywhere!
Day 2: How many characters do you have? Do you prefer males or females?
My characters are legion. Are there any writers out there who don’t have a million different voices in their head? I’ve been making up stories for thirty years, there’s no way I could remember every single character, much less count them.
As for the second part … I could say that I prefer a balance, and that would be true to a certain extent. But deep down, I really want to write a lot of female characters, women who readers can both relate to and fantasize about. (Not that way, you perverts. Not this time, anyway!) My first exposure to non-YA fantasy was Marion Zimmer Bradley’s Sword and Sorceress anthologies, which I started picking up at the library when I was around 13. In them, I found story after story about women kicking ass and doing magic, and I wanted to be each and every one of them. I want to write stories like that, full of women who have more purpose than to just be the damsel in distress, a sex object, or an idealized vision put up on a pedestal by some self-involved male character. The more girls the better, as far as I’m concerned!
In other news, this post sums up my feelings about Eat, Pray, Love pretty much exactly. I loved the book, and it inspired me to get up off my ass and do something – but only after I got over the initial crushing despair when I compared my life (and budget) to hers. The fact that she’s rich and unfettered is not the point; the point is making yourself do things you would never have thought to do before. I’m not always the best at creeping beyond my comfort zone, but I think I’ve gotten a lot better in the last few years!
