It's Late

But I wanted to get caught up on my 52 Stories.  Well, sort of caught up.  I finished last week's story. 

Week 7: Turncoat 

And that's it.  Shortest post ever?  Maybe so. 

This week's story is going to be done this week!  No more of this getting hung up on trying to make it good.  No more!  These are rough drafts, first drafts, meant to be terrible.  And I will let them be terrible and trickle off and have inconsistencies.  Because those can all be fixed later.  But not having anything written can only be fixed by getting words down.  So here they are.

Wishcasting Wednesday--Straight From the Heart

I haven't done a Wishcasting Wednesday in quite a while.  So much going on in my life--something had to give, and much as I love the wishes it was too hard to keep up.  This week is a week off from ROW80, though, and I'm struggling with feeling blocked and overwhelmed, so it seemed like a good time to come back to Wishcasting.

This week, Jamie asked, "What is your heart's wish?"

I feel overwhelmed and weepy and filled with this nameless longing when I read that.  I don't have an answer, and yet I'm feeling pulled to answer this.  Maybe it's something I need to answer in my journal.  This may be one of those things that I need to write about over and over again.  Maybe for now I will just wish to know what my heart's wish actually is.

I have visions, bits and pieces.  House and home beautiful, inviting, relaxing, welcoming.  Writing happening regularly.  Creative work happening regularly.  Healthy habits--movement and food all pleasurable and good.  Those are a lot of wishes, but somehow in my head--in my heart--it all blends into one thing.  So that's my heart's wish, even if it isn't clear.

And now I'm going back to last week's story for 52 Stories. Because I got behind, but I'm not givign up.  I'm going to catch up with last week's story, and then I'm going to keep going.  Maybe that's not quite exactly how the challenge is supposed to go, but my rules say that at the end of the year I will have 52 rough drafts, and that is going to be a success.

Whirlwind

Wow.  This round of ROW80 has gone by so quickly!  I can't believe this is the final check-in, but here it is.

These were my goals at the beginning of the round:

• Write* at least 15 minutes each weekday; weekends are optional
• Participate in the ROW80 Twitter discussions and use bookending techniques there to help me stay on task
• Read and comment on blogs each check-in, even if I only have time for one or two.

The writing part of this morphed, especially after I started doing 52 Stories. I have been getting writing done every week, so that's good, but I never hit the consistency I was looking for.  I'm still not sure what a good rhythm is for me.   But I'm writing!  So I'm happy.

I really bombed on participating in discussions and commenting on blogs.  I've had so much going on* since the beginning of the year, and I just didn't have the focus I needed to do this.  I also found that the bookending didn't do anything for me, so I stopped doing that, but that was a conscious decision so I don't consider that a negative at all.

*The quick summary  of "so much going on" is that I've been writing--at the end of this round I have six short story rough drafts posted (working on this week's now, but it isn't ready yet so can't be counted in this round).  I also finished my Kaizen-Muse Creativity Coaching (TM) class and am working on the final bits for my certification.  I've created and planned my first teleclass, Midsummer's Muse, which I'll be presenting tomorrow night (it's free, and you're all invited to sign up if you want to come play!).  I've been working on the planning for the Time Travelers' Ball and Exposition.  I've been participating in Lisa Sonora Beam's Creative + Practice and Liz Lamoreux's Inner Excavate-along.  It's been really busy around here since February, so I understand why I had trouble keeping up with checking blogs and such.  But I really hope to do better next round.

Stay tuned for this week's story to get posted either tomorrow or Friday (probably Friday).  Thanks so much for all the support!  See you all next round.

Once Upon a Time

I just wrote a cheesy little children's fairy tale for this week's 52 Stories.  Not at all what I intended to write, and definitely not what I usually write.  But yesterday everyone was passing around this article about "The 22 Rules of Storytelling According to Pixar." Of course I read it.  And #4 caught my attention.  Then this morning someone (darned if I can find that link now) sent around #4 as a writing prompt.  So I used it.

Here's #4: Once upon a time there was ___. Every day, ___. One day ___. Because of that, ___. Because of that, ___. Until finally ___.

Anyhow, here's this week's story, only a day behind which I am please with considering last week's story didn't get posted until Saturday.

Week 6:  Out of the Woods

Crashing Waves

My ROW80 check-in.  Not much to report again...

The past two weeks have been too hectic, and I am feeling swamped.  I'm going under! 

Okay, it's not quite that drastic, at least not anymore.  Finally, today, I feel like things have slowed down, but I still have things to do yet I am feeling wrung out and exhausted.  Last week was crazy, so my 52 Stories piece got pushed to the weekend, and the weekend was busy, and now I'm not finished with this week's story... And then the (finally resolved) e-mail fiasco that took two full days to straighten out. Eek!  I need to breathe! 

I have to remind myself--balance is an activity.  It is something you do.  So there will be swings from one direction to the other, and sometimes they are big swings and take me too far into chaos or stagnation.  But I always get to move out of those places and back toward that center.  Now, today, is a day for me to do some of that.  Some breathing.  Some playing.  Some setting things aside for later, when I have a bit more focus and clarity for them.  They will be better and things will go more smoothly if I take this time.

I actually do have a story started for this week.  It's one I started at the beginning of my 52 Stories journey, and I am finally feeling like working on it.  I think I know what to do with it.  We'll see.  I may work on that later, but there's a good chance I won't touch it until tomorrow.

Today, I need something a little more introspective and meditative.  This is what I want to work on today:

• Reading and taking a photo for the Inner Excavate-along
• Reading and maybe adding some journal images for Creative + Practice
• Putting gesso on the pages of the travel journal I made for my vacation next month

I think I will also drink some tea and watch NCIS reruns while I work.  Because for some reason, NCIS in the background relaxes me and makes me feel like I'm safe with friends--it's like comfort food for my brain!

That's my check-in and my plan.  I think I'm going to go work on those journal pages right now.

Potpourri

This post is a little of this and a little of that.  Lots of stuff on my mind.  But as I think about what I want to write about, I think I'm seeing a theme...

I finally finished my 52 Stories piece for this week. I really struggled.  But I got it done!  I am feeling very proud right now, not because of the story but because I was having a really rough week--lots going on, some heavy emotions, a yucky spring cold.  I didn't want to write.  I just wanted to hide out and read and play games.  But I got it done!  That feels so good, sitting down and doing the work even when everything was really rough.  This feels like a breakthrough.

I've had a couple of big mind shifts this week. First, as I mentioned back in mid-May, I'm participating in  Lisa Sonora Beam's Creative + Practice course.  I am behind.  I'm struggling to sink into the work, I keep letting things get in the way, and I keep getting annoyed with myself for not doing it.  And then, yesterday, I had a realization.  This work isn't a one time thing.  I will be going through many of these lessons and activities over and over again.  And, as with any practice, the beginning is rough, filled with skipped days and skimped-on work.  But some days the work is happening.  And I'm thinking about it, thinking of how to make it easier to show up for the work every day.  And this is how I am building a practice.  By returning to it, moving forward, keeping at it.  It's not about doing it perfectly, especially not right out of the gate.  It's about doing it and doing it again, and coming back to it over and over again.  I don't have to be perfect, and I don't have to keep up with the weekly schedule for this to be working and helping me build a creative practice!

My second big realization this week came because I jumped in on Jeff Goins' 15 Habits of Great Writers challenge.  On the third day, the activity was to get up two hours early to write.  I read that, and I became argumentative, angry, agitated.  I have done that get up early to write thing before, and it's been awful every time.  My body clock doesn't adjust to it--I'm not a morning person, and I never have been, and I never will be.  But in the past I really tried to follow all those programs that tell you that you can reset your body clock and so on.  I've also done Julia Cameron's morning pages.  I just end up cranky, exhausted, usually end up sick because I'm run down from lack of sleep, and I start to resent my writing.  I don't want to resent my writing!  I want to love it.

And then came the breakthrough.  I've done this part of the work already.  I have given it a try to see what happens, and I know that getting up at 4:30 a.m. doesn't work for me.  I don't need to do this again; I've done it already.  I'm already enough of a writer to know that the early morning time slot doesn't help my writing, it hurts it.  I am a writer, and I know this about my own process!

So yeah, it's been a big week, and now I know three new things:

1. I can write even when life is rough and I'm unmotivated and resistant.
2. Practice is built from perseverance, not perfection and sticking exactly to a schedule.
3. I am a writer, and I don't work well in the early morning; I work best in the afternoon and early evening.

This has been a really good week!

Week 5: And So It Begins

Lessons

Wednesday!  That's ROW80 check-in day (one of them) for those of you keeping score.  And it's the day I post my 52 Stories piece each week (or at least the day I aim for).

This week's story has been filled with lessons.  Lessons about getting stuck, writing myself into a corner, and pushing on to an ending even though I know there's a lot of stuff in the middle that doesn't hold up to scrutiny.

This is really good stuff!  This is where I so often quit writing, so I never give myself the chance to finish up and then go back and edit and fix the problems.  Weird as it may sound, I hope this happens again so I can really build a habit of just finishing without worrying about the details in the first draft.  The fixing and polishing are supposed to come later. I know that, but I can never seem to live by that.  This might be helping me learn it for real!

It seems a little weird, this lack of self-consciousness and anxiety about posting this story.  This story, that just came to me yesterday, that was written down willy nilly with no idea what was happening in the middle.  Is it because of all it's flaws that I can be so unworried about posting it?  I don't know.  I like this feeling of doing the work without the anxiety, though.  This is how I want to feel about my writing--curious, happy, experimental (is that a feeling?). I like it.  This is what I will aim for.

I will also aim for checking in on some blogs!  I didn't get to any since Sunday for various reasons, and that part of the ROW80 challenge is really important, so I don't like slacking on it.

Before I get to this week's story, I have a little announcement.  I think I've mentioned that I'm training to be a Kaizen-Muse (TM) Creativity Coach.  For the final part of my training, to get my certification, I need to find one person to be my client for a month.  If you have creative dreams you're struggling with, this is your chance to get some help with it.  You'll get four free coaching sessions with me; I'm already fully trained and just need to do these sessions with someone (and the paperwork that goes with them, of course!) for my certification.  So who wants some coaching?  If you're interested, leave me a comment or head over to my website and use the contact form there.

Now, about that story...

Week 4:  Sleeping Your Life Away

Just Passing Through

It's time for a ROW80 check-in.  I haven't done a lot of writing since Wednesday, although I've been doing a lot of in-my-head planning for this week's story, but I still feel like I have a lot to say. 

It's been a very busy few days--homework, food shopping and cooking for a family gathering today, and then a day filled with pulling out old carpet and padding and laying down a new floor in my partner's mother's kitchen.  The family went in on this together and did this for her for her birthday, and she was so excited!  It was a fabulous thing to get to do for someone.  Lot's of work, and we're all pretty wiped out, but it's so great to know we did this.  Very satisfying work.

Anyhow, that writing thing.  I'm feeling like I'm starting to see something deeper in this 52 Stories challenge.  I am feeling like a writer again, my head full of story most of the time and words appearing regularly on the page.  And that feels incredible and was the purpose of starting this challenge.  But I am starting to see something more here, something akin to a spiritual practice.  I can feel the work taking me past my ego into the now of writing.  I can feel this leading me to learn so much about myself and my process.  There is so much good happening here even when it is worrisome and stressful.  This is going to be quite a trip.

Right now, though, I'm going to trip into bed.  It seems manual labor is tiring!  See you all later.

It's Electric!

ROW80 check-in: This week has been angsty for me.  I don't know why.  I've been uncomfortable, on edge, unfocused, and twitchy.  For no reason that I can pinpoint, and that is frustrating, because if I don't know what this is about, how can I fix it?

I know some things are weighing on me.  Maybe my edgy, prickly uneasiness is just a pile-up of lots of random things going on at once.  Who knows.

I am having trouble--again--finishing my story for this week.  I am worried that I've taken on too much with this 52 Stories challenge.  I am tempted to back out, to change to something easier.  A story a month, which is something a friend of mine did last year.

What am I going to do if I don't finish a story one week?  It will probably happen.  Do I put up the partially finished story and finish it out later?  Does that count as a failure even though I did write something?  How am I keeping score for myself with this?

I know one thing.  I am writing and enjoying it.  I love having a story going.  But I also love working on different things, I love the switch each week.  I am not yet willing to let go of this challenge.  It's only the third week.  I haven't been doing it long enough to break through my barriers of resistance and fear and overwhelm and unconfidence (it's a new word, do you like it? goes with "angsty" up above).

This week, I think my story will get posted tomorrow.  Too many random things came up in the past few days.  Coupled with my general anxiety at the moment, I need to give myself a day. So, there it is.  There's a day.

Later: Apparently giving myself a day caused me to sit down and finish that story.  My brain is funny like that.  This story was interesting because it came from a poem I've heard at least a couple hundred times, especially the line "the woods are lovely, dark, and deep."   (Robert Frost, "Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening.")  The other day, someone passed around a picture online with that quote, and the basics of this story popped into my head.

I don't feel like this story is one I'm going to flesh out.  I kind of rushed the ending, too, but I got it down enough.  This one was just one I wanted to get out.  I think this story-a-week thing is teaching me how to bypass my ego and just focus on the words.  I think I might like this, even when it's hard.  I just need to remind myself not to get caught up in the fear and overwhelm.

Anyhow, here's the story, which was really kind of fun to play with.  Not as fun as the one I have in mind for next week, though, so stay tuned!

Week 3: The Woods are Lovely

Rolling Along

Time for the Sunday ROW80 check-in.  And I have lots to report--it's kind of exciting.

Since Wednesday:

• Read and commented on several ROW80 compatriots' blogs
• Wrote an outline/synopsis of my 52 Stories piece for next week
• Wrote the opening scene to this week's story
• Did quite a bit of journaling and a couple of blog posts
• Started writing the info pages for two upcoming projects for my coaching business

I'm feeling quite satisfied with this list.  I'm feeling like I got a lot done, and I don't feel overwhelmed or like this pace will be hard to keep up.  I proclaim this week a success!  On to the next one.

Oh Boy

Here's my ROW80 check-in.  And I'm linking to my first story for 52 Stories.  Gulp.

This is my brain on putting my worst, first draft work out in public

I don't have anything else to report.  I was totally freaked out and frozen with fear about putting my work out there.  I struggled with this for several days, and it turned into a huge battle this afternoon when I though about backing out of this, but here I am.

This is the first time in over five years that I'm letting anyone read what I've written, and I've chosen to put it out there for the whole world to see.  It's the first time in longer than that since I've finished a story, even a rough draft. I think that's enough of a check-in for this week.  I'm going to go collapse now.  See you Sunday!

Please note:
Because these are first drafts and therefore not meant to be good yet, and because I am working on building my confidence, I have turned off comments on my 52 Stories page.  The stories will be in PDF format, so there won't be any place for comments there.  I am not at the point in my writing life or with these stories where critique would be welcome or useful, so that's why there are no comment spaces.

Week 1:  This Means War

Lazy Days

My ROW80 check-in for today: Not much going on.  And I'm okay with that. 

The past couple of weeks have been especially busy, and I'm still getting over the sinus infection I had, plus this weekend we had a medieval faire to attend.  So some downtime was sorely needed, so today was all about the lounging.

Still, I've done some writing.  I have a story started for 52 Stories. Actually I have two, with a couple of other ideas in the sidelines waiting their turns.  I'll be posting my stories on Wednesdays since I started this craziness on a Wednesday, so you'll have to wait a couple more days for actual story.

I didn't do much on Twitter, but I did some so that goal is okay.  I did a couple of blog check-ins, but I would have liked to do more.  I may have to make myself some sort of calendar reminder about that.

That's really all I have to report right now.  I want to go do a little work on my story before bed to see if I can get some more of those fun dream ideas I've been having lately. 

See you Wednesday.

Back in Black

Oh.  I think that's supposed to be "back on track."  I just love song lyric post titles, though!  I'm wearing black pants.  Does that count?

This past week, I've been feeling a lot like a spinning record (sinusitis and a plugged ear from said affliction).  It doesn't help that as I'm writing this Dead or Alive's "You Spin Me Round" is playing.  The lightheaded, fluffy feeling and bouts of dizziness (much decreased and less frequent, thank you) seem to be skewing my perceptions of the world right now.

This is supposed to be about writing, though, and my ROW80 check-in.  Sunday I was still too sick to look at the computer long enough to write a post.  Plus, my brain wasn't doing well with stringing thoughts together let alone writing them down.  So...

I haven't done a lot of writing.  A couple of days worth on the novel.  A little time on Sunday with a notebook writing down an idea for a piece of flash fiction.  And then a newsletter.  And then some of my ROW80 compatriots told me about this thing some people are doing, writing a story a week for a year.  It's called 52 Stories, and it sent a thrill of excitement up my spine.  Seriously.

You see, I started with short stories.  First as a storyteller, making up stories in the lunch line as a small schoolgirl to keep myself and my friends entertained while we waited.  And of course my dolls (yes, Barbie included--I loved Barbie, so there!) had very exciting and elaborate lives.  Barbie's boyfriend was G.I. Joe, and sometimes Ken, too.  And they were spies.  Except when they were vampires.  And they often lived in a large mansion or a castle built out of jigsaw puzzle boxes and hardcover Reader's Digest Condensed Books.  And then there were the elaborate stories I concocted and made the other neighborhood kids reenact with me.  But I digress...

Short stories were where I started.  And I know I can do them while I'm still feeling shaky about being able to finish a novel.  And I really want to finish something.  I want a challenge that I feel will be really challenging (a story a week will do that) but that I know I can do.

So I'm doing this.

I'm changing my goals slightly to accommodate my new love.  Here's the new, improved Round 2 list:

• Write at least 15 minutes each weekday; weekends are optional--this is staying the same, but the writing will be mostly working on short stories now. I will probably continue the discovery writing process for my novel idea, too, because the two kinds of writing are different and compatible.
• Post a story a week--this is new and goes with the 52 Stories.  I'm not sure if I'm going to post the stories here or set up a semi-private blog for them or what.  There's that little, niggling voice that tells me if I publish them on my blog they will be unpublishable elsewhere.  I don't know for sure that this is something I need to consider just now.  What if I just write them for fun and to share with people just so I can start enjoying and improving my craft again?  What if this set of stories isn't for publication but just for fun?
• Participate in the ROW80 Twitter discussions and use bookending techniques there to help me stay on task--I'm still occasionally jumping in on Twitter and still would like to do more.  I'm ditching the bookending.  It just feels like one more thing to do, it doesn't seem to be adding anything to my writing, and it feels like an annoyance with no benefits.
• Read and comment on blogs each check-in, even if I only have time for one or two.--Sticking with this; I didn't do any since last Wednesday because I've been sick, but I'll be back to it now.

There you have it.  My first story is in the works.  I'll let you all know what I decide about where I'm posting (ideas on that are so very welcome!) once I figure it out.  See you later!