There's a List for That, and Other Adventures in the New Year

The happiest of New Years to you all! May 2010 be the best year yet.

Recently, a friend introduced me to Listography. She and I are both avid list-makers, and this has allowed me to access my lists, from to-do to daily reminders, in one easy to access place. I have not yet established a writing to-do list, mostly as I'm still recovering from the last big project (which had over 55,000 words once finished). I have a proof of a recent draft from my good friend Natania Barron to read, and then it's back to work for me. I'm brainstorming a reasonable, yet disciplined writing schedule for 2010, and making some hard choices in what to keep and what goes when it comes to my social life.

2009 saw me become a bit more of a homebody--as much as I can be as a slight E-NFP. I'm enjoying sticking around town, close to home, more than "going out," and hanging out with my husband and the cat children, or reading a good book are far more attractive pastimes to me than any bar or party, however intimate. This is also a wonderful thing for my desire to write, which I should rather do than watch television so much. The long holiday break numbed my brain--not such a bad thing, when temporary--but it is time to get back to work; back to work that is play.

So, I'm going to be working on writing lists at Listography. A weekly schedule, as well as a 'to do' for my WIP. Then, when I go to Listography each day, I'll see my lists immediately--no better reminder of what is on the agenda for the day. I find that lists work best for keeping me on track and accomplishing goals. And I have set some challenging goals for myself in 2010, in the form of resolutions, which I normally make and break, even after swearing that I won't make resolutions. Not this year! I will succeed, and the list is there not only as a reminder, but also as motivation. The satisfaction of checking off items, and watching the list of goals dwindle from accomplishment and achievement, is my greatest motivator. Not to mention, most of my goals for 2010 are health related, physical and mental, as well as spiritual, and to meet the goal is to inevitably become my best self.

Do you have goals for the New Year? Share them if you like, or share some of the ways you stay motivated, in the comments. I'd love to hear them!

On Wanting to Write, then Not Writing

It's the strangest thing. This weekend, after an end-of-week jolt of inspiration hearing Natania Barron read with Mur Lafferty and Jeff Vandermeer at Chapel Hill Comics, I thought at some point this weekend I'd try to finish out my outline for the Victorian element of my WIP. Phrases and snippets of dialogue entered my mind on Saturday, but for whatever reason, I did not sit down to write. I wonder why this is?

I have one other writing project I'm working on, really data entry, that has a deadline fast approaching. I have been less and less able to disengage from the content of the writing and just enter the data. The content, plus my ongoing mental argument with it, distracts from my ability to type quickly and accurately. This is only made worse by the fact that the writer's arguments are not well supported, when they are supported at all, and the insipid anecdotes moralizing about how to be a good Christian and every other sentence showcasing some of cliche's worst offenders...combined this is probably my worst nightmare. I have to resist editing everything to my own style and turn of phrase, which admittedly would dissolve the personality of these little newsletter passages. The author's character comes through, her personality, and her thoughts and her moralizing are genuine. I am trying to get over the fact that I don't like HER as well as her writing. That's a difficult challenge.

I have eight more years of newsletters to type. It looks like eight plus hours of literary torture on the page.

So, out of guilt for not having this project completed, I did not work on my own story, which would have been fun. For whatever reason, I feel I can have no fun until my most unfun project is complete. I made a promise to someone that I would tackle the project, and I will hold to my word. I will not, however, take on this sort of project again, religious or not. I've noticed that I am too much of a "yes" person, and I'm finding that if I am ever to get any of my own projects done, I'm going to have to learn to say "no" to others and "yes" to myself.

The next few nights, I plan on tackling this outstanding project in earnest. I'd like to finish it this week, before the holiday, so I can use some of my well-deserved time off for writing I WANT to be doing.

Remember, Remember...

...the ebb of November. I've heard the question asked before: why is NaNoWriMo done in November? It feels fine in the beginning, though the second week. But by the third week in November, gearing up for the Thanksgiving holiday must drop word counts far and wide. It certainly has mine.

Actually, I should be honest and say that I stalled out for other reasons, reasons that puzzle me more than the choice of month for NaNoWriMo.

I was re-writing my initial draft of the "time-travel romance" WIP, the Victorian England bit, the bit I thought most likely to generate the 50K needed to satisfy the requirement for November. As I neared the end of my drafted content, I outlined the rest of the episode and LOVED where the story went. But when it came writing it, tacking it on to the re-worked previous 14,ooo+ words, I couldn't muster the courage. That break in flow broke my momentum, and it's been steeping in my brain ever since. Now that it's the end of the month, and Thanksgiving week, I have a lot of distractions that I let keep me from writing. I still WANT to finish the episode, but I know it is not going to be finished for NaNoWriMo, so part of me says why bother?

I am glad to have attempted it. I feel that if I have a viable WIP for 2010, or have neared completion on the current WIP, I will start something from scratch. I don't feel bad that I did not succeed, because, in a way, I did succeed. I upped my first draft by about 5,000 words, and that's good news for me. And, I have an outline I like for the rest of the episode. It feels good to write, and I experienced some of the oddities expected from NaNoWriMo--characters doing what you'd least expect, more moving than I bargained for scenes and dialogue, and some evocative description. I felt myself relax and let the words flow onto the page, rather than feeling as though I fought against them to shape and mold them before they reached the page, and that was a great improvement.

I look forward to continuing these trends and good habits into 2010!

And We're Off!

Off schedule, that is. NaNoWriMo started yesterday, 01 November, and despite having done nothing all day, I also managed not to write 1500 words. So, I've started today, and completed day one totals (1551), and will continue tonight to break 3000 words. Close to on track then. Feels good to watch that little bar graph fill up, I imagine.

I have one "buddy," Natania, who I often mention here. If you are participating in NaNoWriMo and read this weblog, you can add me as a buddy by the name of "boreasword." Just a brief update, and I may post a brief excerpt later this evening once the word count is met. Wish me luck!

Projection

I'm trying to get back to writing here more frequently than once a month! Good grief!

I've got a link to myself at NaNoWriMo in the sidebar, and have been thinking really hard on what I'm going to start for the month of November. Migraine has kept me from truly researching the next historical element in my current WIP, so I might start something from scratch, just to be writing. My schedule is cleared, with the occasional exception, and I should be able to escape into the work long enough each day to meet the word count I've set for myself. If I get into the groove, and write more, that's fantastic. I'll be that much closer to making 50,000k! Part of me expects not to succeed, but the rest of me knows I'll come close. That's fine for my first attempt. If all goes well, meaning if I don't kill myself writing, I'll plan on joining the race again next year.

At the request of my mother-in-law, I am entering data from many years worth of a pastor's columns from a monthly church bulletin. The woman in question has just celebrated an anniversary in her calling, and my m-i-l wanted to make a gift, but her rheumatoid arthritis keeps her from typing quickly or accurately. I volunteered to enter the data, edit and create a perfunctory layout based on the liturgical year. If anything, it's speed practice for my touch typing and some experimental experience laying out what will be a magazine, as far as I'm concerned.

Entering in someone elses' text has reminded me how much I take for granted my grammatical and editorial skills. In correcting spelling, punctuation and errors in tense shifts, I realize that I am very lucky to have the knowledge and skills to do these things on the fly. (Spelling I can forgive, as many of these articles were composed before the advent of spell-checking programs. In fact, I think the first few years of her column were typed instead of word processed.) These mistakes certainly slow down the typing, which for me is pretty quick and mindless after 20-odd years of touch typing, but I also find myself getting hung up on comma and M-dash usage. While in most cases, their placement is technically correct, they tend to stilt the style, leaving the message of the column difficult to suss out without a second, closer read. In some ways, I understand this is the pastor's personal style, using longer pauses and caesuras to hold a moment between the set-up and delivery of her point. The project has been an experiment in getting into a writer's style that is so completely different than my own--a bit like a character study.

Revisiting the Idea of a Soul Journal

I was reading an article in the New York Times about the decision to publish C. G. Jung's The Red Book, the noted analysts personal documentation of his own individuation. The article was fascinating, and the images accompanying it inspiring. I was reminded of a long languishing project I started some years ago that I called a Soul Journal. I started it with a book of prompts for journaling, and it also doubled as a way for me to practice some altered book techniques in advance of actually altering a book. It was visual, dynamic, and deeply personal. I shared it with members of a short lived artists group, and it was met with praise. Shortly thereafter, it got packed away during the renovation of our bedroom and I haven't added anything to it in years.

I was first inspired to start my Soul Journal after seeing results from the 1000 Journals project. I have kept a personal journal since age 10, when I first started realizing that what my imagination was generating was sometimes too big for my brain to hold. I started with single subject spiral notebooks, college ruled, and eventually moved to massive 3-subject Five-Star brand journals, as I've mentioned here before. Up until I first encountered the vibrant journals at 1000 journals, my notebooks were filled with various iterations of my handwriting with the occasional doodle in the margins or images stuffed into the subject divider's pockets. I never used color (only blue or black ink), let alone mixed media. The pages of these journals spoke deeply to me. (Now I see there is a sister project called 1001 Journals where you can sign up for a traveling journal, or start one and upload images to the site!)

Seeing the Jung's calligraphy, the intense and strangely beautiful images, fully grasping the effort it must have taken to create this tome whilst in the throes of "a schizophrenia" as he claims, is incredibly inspiring. I want to bind my own book. I want to fill it with elegant penmanship. I've been thinking of taking a beginning calligraphy class, and I will sign up in the spring. I've been wanting to practice drawing in my journals, and I am making a conscious effort to do so each time I write more than a few lines. More inclusion of ephemera, found objects, color, handwritten fonts...more than just my pen to page. I'm not having any sort of episode, and I feel like I provide the bare minimum in my handwritten space. No more! I need to practice technique for my new Soul Journal.

I also find myself thinking that I may actually need to do the work that accompanies individuation, or soul reclamation. Documenting this process is a little frightening, but I suppose going in too the deep self often is foreboding. I know that it is also rewarding. 2010 has to be a year of some big changes for me, so it's time to start laying the groundwork now. Prioritize. Actualize. Energize. Visualize. Synthesize.

Post 50, or Progress Report

Hello, Dear Readers.

You may have noticed that the 30 Poem in 30 Days Challenge fell just shy of thirty poems. I went on vacation and naively thought I would have time to write poetry on the road to PA, NY, and DE. Alas, I hardly had time to sit, let alone compose verse. I considered making it up, after the deadline, but have decided against that as well. LaToya and I may revisit this challenge sometime in the New Year, and until then, I have these poems on a writer's group for critique and will begin editing them in a few weeks, to include a culling of the herd. I was pleasantly surprised at the number of drafts I have worth keeping, molding into shape. What's more, it was fun and it got me thinking about the next big challenge on the horizon: NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month.

I attempted this challenge last November, but I wasn't ready. It was excruciating staring at the page, the flashing cursor, the silent elipse is sends into your brian, as though saying, "And...?" I had thought to work on Aiden and the White Arrow, I started a blind re-write using only my six year old outline, but I wasn't feeling it. I certainly couldn't keep up with the pace needed to finish 50,000 words in 30 days (about 1667 words per day).

This year, I'm going to try again.

Yes, that word count seems a little daunting, especially when I consider that my current writing sessions produce 500-700 words and occur once or twice a week. But this is what I want to do with my life, right? Write? I am inspired, I am ready, I just have to break the awful habit of not writing. My good, and inspiring friend, Natania, recently made a firm comment about doing the work (something she's said before, only this time it smacked me in the head), about showing up and writing. Period. So, that's what I'm going to do, since it is the only thing I haven't tried. Simple solutions are best, and this one is a no-brainer.

As for the WIP, I'm about 1/3 of the way through the draft of the Victorian England episode. To the good scenes, with less exposition and more action, to include all the wierd happenings between my heroine and one of the other protagonists. The scene where they finally meet was tough, meant to be awkward and it was to write as well. But, that's what first drafts are for, and this is only a draft. I can't have 7 historical flashbacks at 10,000+ words in a novel. Just can't happen. That's why I feel this is such an ambitious project--it's not for the writing, but the editing to come.