Category: psycho writing

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slackery, writing, and new journals

I have no excuse for not updating here, especially since you have no doubt busted me wasting time on Facebook or Twitter. Somehow, though, 140 characters seems easier to accomplish than a blog post, at least in these past months of an insanely distracting and busy time at work. It doesn’t help when I remember that I have three blog posts sitting in draft mode, two of which have been rendered obsolete.

But it’s all good…or as they say, it all comes out in the wash. So maybe I’m back for a spell — maybe I’ll just hit-and-run post and continue wih a pronounced period of slackery.

Actually, I suspect things are going to be much improved now, and we’ll leave it at that.

I have been doing a lot of writing, just not here. I filled up my last journal a little sooner than I thought, and took a little outing in search of a new model.

Some people obsess over manuals and blue books and whatever else they use to buy new cars — I spend endless hours caressing journals in bookstores. I know, it’s a little weird.

Anyway, I finally settled on one from the monastery…. I used a plain black Picadilly lined journal for too many years to count (the …um…black one in the picture). Lately, though, I’ve found that size, while convenient for slipping into my bag, a bit tiresome on my hand. Yes, this is the part where I sound all old and stuff and whine about arthritis, wah wah wah. So I went a little bit larger, and unlined, so I don’t feel all cramped about writing small, either (dare I mention my aging eyes? no? good idea).

Here’s a little comparison, with the old journal on top of the new:

But the best part is that it is filled with pages and pages of cream-colored thick paper screaming to have me fill it up with stuff:

Heaven.

And if that isn’t enough, every so often it has a little inspirational quote on the bottom. Usually, I think it’s a cheesy distraction in a journal, but this one is full of saints’ ponderings, so who am I to pooh-pooh St. Teresa of Avila, who happens to have today’s entry:

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on the road

I drove home a little distracted by the conversation I was having with myself. I do that a lot. Have conversations with myself. I finally decided to do something productive with it, and started to dictate stuff to myself. Who knows? Maybe the only thing keeping me from writing the great American novel is finding the right undergrad needing money and willing to transcribe my madness.

But I digress.

I was talking about my drive home in a distracted state. Yes. Distraction. It plagues me when my To-Do list sprouts To-Do lists. And that’s when the little artist voice inside me decides to come out and play. When I don’t have the time or the attention span to dedicate to it. Because the grown up voice with the job and the bills and the familial responsibilities says it’s time to be a grown-up.

The real me wants to play with words, and I’m not talking about that neat little scrabble knock-off that consumes my phone battery. I want to write, and it seems that everywhere I look there is something I want to capture. Especially on my ride home, when I’m supposed to have both hands on the wheel.

What do you do when you have the need to create?

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The Day After

An Open Letter to My NaNoWriMo Friends,

Congratulations to all of the winners! Wow, you guys are amazing. I thoroughly enjoyed racing with you and doing word count sprints. That was a lot of fun.

But it was also a lot of work.

The most important lesson I learned in this year’s National Novel Writing Month is that relationships with other writers are important. It’s a lonely business to face the glow of the monitor, alone, but that’s how writing gets done. It’s the before and after that can make or break us. To have someone say, c’mon, let’s go tackle 300 words in 10 minutes inspired me. To see word counts pop up in the Twitterfeed added a nice element of friendly competition that was less about competing and more about accomplishing.

I loved that. We’re all producing different things, but we’re doing it in a community. Kind of like real life outside the anonymity of social media. We’re real people living real lives away from the glow of the monitor.

Imagine what we can accomplish if we encourage each other in those other pursuits.

And to the other Nanos, like me, that came in under the 50K, well, congratulations to you, too! It’s a crazy race to finish that goal in 30 days and sometimes life gets a little in the way of meeting the word count. Let’s keep at it.

Notice that I didn’t congratulate anyone for finishing the novel. I’m careful to say word count and not finished novel because I think there are more than a few unfinished novels that have a great beginning, don’t y’all think? I do.

And then there’s that other thing: revision.

I’m going to make a note of all my writing buddies and check back in with you guys in six months. We should be done by then. Right?

Right!!!

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