Advice

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The importance of being kind

Of course, generally I mean in a large and societal sense, but today I’m focusing on right here in my home office. Which is half of my bedroom.

My free writing has been very angry lately. I don’t feel as if the people around me are behaving appropriately, I feel like the government is rushing things, and I have started thinking about when I get sick instead of if because hey, people need coffee for their selfies, right? The economy must go on.

It is difficult to find value in personal productivity without hearing that word in the voice of corporate culture. I cannot think of being productive without guilt being nearby (not productive enough, not efficient enough, not working hard enough even when it’s for my own benefit). It’s been like a dog chasing its tail in my head for the past week, and everything seems to take so much more energy than before.

I have been able to get some small things done. That list does not include a weekly blog post. I have to literally give myself permission to lower the bar and post this random confession, that’s how deeply ingrained the desire to produce is. (Note to self: waste some time and feel good about it.)

So here I am to say there’s nothing new to show this week. Things are moving behind the scenes and I hope to be able to make “untouched” available next week as a free download. If I cannot complete the zine, I will at least post a bit of it here to give you a taste.

Please be kind with yourselves as well. Listen to your bodies, make time and space to meditate, breathe in some fresh air if you can. I have never appreciated my balcony as much as I do now.

The Bardo, the Bridge, and the Shadow from Kim Krans Wild Unknown Archetypes
Leave a comment Posted on Advice, Practice, Writing

Inspiration

Daily writing practice is great, but what happens when you don’t have an idea? Or there are too many ideas competing to get on the page and your brain locks up? A lot of writers turn to prompts: a word, a phrase, sometimes an entire scenario that can help you get started. This makes it easy to jump on that early momentum and keep going.

I like cards. I don’t know where the obsession started, but the ritual of mixing and drawing and turning over cards is powerful for me. I have several tarot decks, a set of moon cards, and round archetype cards; each provides a set of images, stories in their own right, that can be used for inspiration.

One card can be sufficient for a writing prompt, but on days where I have a little more time and energy it can be fun to take several cards and weave their meanings together into a larger story. The images are rich enough that we can leave the guidebooks aside and focus instead on what is happening in each picture. If you can’t see anything coherent, try moving cards around. Be as simple or complex as you like. As soon as you feel any sort of idea moving in your mind, start writing and see where it takes you.

If you are a seasoned card reader, use the meanings you have learned to your advantage. Lean into any personal connections you have with individual cards, let associations carry you away, and get as much of it onto the page as you can. Practice is allowed to be messy! I have to fight my overwhelming urge to scratch neat lines of cursive into my notebook, but my scratches and misspellings tell me where I had the most energy, where my ideas outpaced my pen.

No cards? No problem! There are endless prompts available online, and communities on social media that offer regular writing challenges, so you can practice while fostering connections and friendships. I’ve also found another great bit of advice in Writing Down the Bones: Goldberg suggests taking down any interesting ideas you have for prompts and keeping them in your writing notebook, to give yourself a jumping-off point if you find yourself blanking down the road.

Another good idea is to commit to a specific time limit. It doesn’t have to be much, you can start with a few minutes to put yourself at ease. This encourages you to put a bit of effort into it; without a time limit, we might get out a few sentences, decide it’s too hard, and go make a cup of tea. Better yet, bring the cup of tea to your writing space, set a timer (on your phone, web browser, or get a cheap one to keep on your desk), and don’t stop until it goes off. When it does, you can stop to consider the writing, or you can take a short break and set another timer for yourself. Repeat as long as you have time and energy, find out what time limit you can commit to and how frequently.

The important thing is to write and see what comes out. A lot of my notebook lately has musings on the past (I am working on autobiographical fiction), complaints of boredom, and one interesting daydream about a plum. That might become something later. If you write nothing but FUCKFUCKFUCK or I don’t know what I’m doing, there is still value in it! You have conquered the blank page and transferred words from your mind to the physical world, and there is magic in that.

4 Comments Posted on Advice, Exercises, Practice, Writing

Practice

Perhaps one of the reasons I’ve struggled so much with my identity as a writer is I don’t practice. I write to complete a project, a blog post, or a story. When Inspiration bubbles up, I’ll often do a freewrite, but that’s about it. No consistent practice.

I was talking with my dear friend Kat (who has started a tarot blog, please have a look!), who asked if I had ever read Natalie Goldberg’s Writing Down the Bones. I am a thousand percent sure someone has quoted her or this book before, but I haven’t read it myself, so I bought a copy and eagerly awaited its arrival.

(We hear a lot about thanking people in healthcare, grocery and pharmacy employees, and cleaners and sanitation workers; let’s please not forget our mail carriers who are working harder than ever during this unprecedented time of staying at home.)

In her introduction, Goldberg invites readers to pick up anywhere, read the book start to finish, whatever works for them. The book is a collection of essays on writing, not only the putting of words on paper but the entire mental process in which we reflect on ideas. I’ve known for a while that a lot of my “writing” takes place in my head, and I need to sleep on major edits; now I’m working my way through this book putting language to concepts I am only beginning to touch.

She also insists on practice, which is a thing I knew writers did, but I never understood how I might do the same. Goldberg provides a variety of ideas for a writer seeking to practice, and though I’m still making my way through her book, I have made time (almost) every day to sit down and put my thoughts down.

In doing so, I quickly ran into a barrier.

I like to write at a desk, because otherwise I’m pretzeled in my bed or on a sofa and cricks begin to develop and I groan and crack and feel like I’m falling apart. However, my desk is the tiny thing I bought for my studio apartment in Parc Ex and can barely fit my laptop, monitor, and a notebook to scribble in. I felt entirely too cramped.

I spent a good three hours assembling and arranging most of what you see here: a larger desk surface, actual organizational space, and the printer out of the way. Right now, I’m enjoying birdsong and natural light (on both sides, I got mirrors!) and a home office space that is really pleasant to be in. My writing practice has never been so smooth, and I have some interesting phrases to look at later.

I will continue to practice, which will help me to work, which will give me something to come here and write about. I say that as if I don’t have news to catch up on, but that has to be another post. I’ll be back Thursday at 5:00pm EDT.

1 Comment Posted on Advice, Memoirs, Personal, Reading, Writing

Kitchen Timer

I’ve just finished reading Lauren Graham’s aptly-titled Talking As Fast As I Can, which was an utter delight and contained something I did not expect: writing advice.

I had somewhat vaguely been made aware of the existence of Someday, Someday Maybe and thought it to be a memoir, and for some reason never pushed myself to pick it up. For context, it came out during a time when I was mostly reading eBooks, and not especially going to great lengths to get new ones; and even though Gilmore Girls has always been a part of my life, it wasn’t receiving the renewed attention that the revival provided. Still, I knew Lauren Graham had written a memoir or autobiography, but weren’t those always ghostwritten anyhow?

My point being, I went to Talking As Fast As I Can to get to know the person behind Lorelai Gilmore a bit better, and I found more than I expected.

Her best bit of advice comes in the chapter entitled Kitchen Timer. I took it as I take all writing advice: this worked for me, it may work for you, but it is hardly the only way to go about putting words on a page. This way, I give myself permission to tweak things a bit, to try and fail and revise before I find a way to successfully make this into some sort of rhythm. So here goes.

I’ve dedicated the next hour to writing. (I actually forgot to set the timer until just before the previous paragraph, oops.) Before I sat down, I cleared my desk of the most useless and distracting things: now there’s nothing but a burning candle, a beverage, my cell phone (turned face-down and on Do Not Disturb), and my personal journal. I am trying to ignore the dust and the urge to reach for the Swiffer hanging on the corkboard: cleaning is such a great accomplice to procrastination. How can I write when my apartment is absolutely filthy?

No, for this next hour, I am writing. Or I am staring at the blinking cursor. I am certainly not getting up to vacuum, I am not fact-checking (though I did check to see if I was blogging when Someday, Someday Maybe came out), and I am not going out for food. If I get stuck here, I can switch to my journal, or I can open Scrivener to work on a novel.

The journal bit struck me as incredibly brilliant. I have often felt guilty about updating my personal journal when my creative writing was lying ignored, but never forgotten. As if text on a screen would stare at me broodily while I scribbled my feelings in a notebook. It’s absurd. My journal is my emotional homework, it is an indispensable tool when I can’t figure out how I’m feeling, why I’m feeling that way, what would make me feel better. The creative stuff is work, and as important as work is, my mental health takes priority.

On more sensible days, I’ve been able to think, “Even if I didn’t write creatively today, I wrote something. I did a good thing.” However, it never occurred to me that I could set my journal beside my keyboard and have both forms of writing be part of a session. It makes sense, I enjoy writing, I feel things while I’m doing it, I have feelings about what I’ve written, as I’m writing it. My personal journal houses many of my feelings. Come to think of it, this could well be an entry in that journal. Maybe I’ll end up keeping it to myself, but I don’t have to decide that just yet.

I know from prior experience that I am happiest when I am actively working to create something, and that spurs me to want to document that experience, and record the emotions I feel as I go through it. It reminds me of something I discussed in therapy, about how getting going with one thing can lead to me doing other things, because completing these tasks makes me happy and makes me want to do more things to continue feeling that way. By overcoming the initial friction of starting one small task, I’ve gotten to a state where my momentum can carry me through other tasks.

I’m about fifteen minutes into my first hour, and I haven’t decided if checking the clock is against the rules. I am over 700 words into this post/entry, and that’s more than I’ve done in a long while. That feels great.

I have a good feeling about this kitchen timer thing, and I expect to post more about it as I go through. More of my deviations this time around: I have read, opening the book to check on what the rules are. I am listening to music with lyrics. I have not disable the Wi-Fi on my computer, though I have managed to ignore my phone. I haven’t used the Internet for any communication, though I think I will post this, finally. And then I’ll go radio silent until my hour is up.