Of Resolutions & Rituals, Purges, Goals, & Owls

I truly love this time of year. New Year is my absolute favorite holiday, and I have various rituals associated with it. I thought I’d share them with you; I really believe in their power and efficacy—and my wish for all of you for 2015 is empowerment and effectiveness.

At the end of the post, I’ll be sharing my usual special offer to celebrate New Year.

Happy New Year! I hope 2015 is a year of creative growth and forward motion for us all.

Wordy Bird’s New Year’s Rituals (live and uncut)

1. The Great Office-Studio Purge

This is a must. I do have a lovely room in which to work and create, but it does get rather out of hand, especially toward Christmas, and especially when I have a major creative project underway. Ok, it’s shocking and I'm (sort of) embarrassed, but I'm determined to keep it real here and I have promised a few people some before and after shots. Nobody's perfect, and life can get in the way of good intentions, but this is why you should look forward to and embrace the Purge. (But then, I have read that many creative people tend to do better work in chaotic spaces...)

Exquisite chaos, extreme shame.

Phoebe can't believe it either.

Nine-year-old me, who kept her books 

categorized and neat, would be incensed!

 You never know what you'll find...

The palette I've been looking for for ages. 

A terribly important magnetic Z.

These. 

Expect the chaos to get exponentially worse before it gets better.

There’s nothing like purging and starting the year with a tidy, clutter free, clean space. It feels fantastic. 

Organized by favorites, non-fiction, books
by friends, books I use for teaching, and "other."
Nine-year-old me would be proud. 

Phoebe is speechless.

I must have done a good job because my daughter just walked in and frowned. "It's too clean in here," she said. "Where's your real office?" Don't worry, sweetheart, it'll be back before you know it. 

Shame above me! I couldn't reach. Or face up to
getting rid of any books, if truth be told.

2. The Sublime Setting of the Goals

We all know that resolutions beg to be broken and can be rather self-defeating. I’m a HUGE advocate, however, of concrete goal-setting. I believe in writing goals down and keeping them close at hand. In my opinion, it’s the best kick starter to define what you want to achieve, hold yourself accountable, and actually get stuff done.   

I usually reassess my goals around midyear. There’s nothing wrong with reassessment and a shift in priorities; in fact, to not reassess your goals is folly. Situations change, unexpected opportunities arise, and so sometimes you need to shift course before you crash and burn. And note I said “reassess” and “shift,” not lower. Never lower you expectations. Big goals, even if they seem outside the realm of the possible, will keep you focused and take you further than lower expectations. Big goals must, of course, be broken into smaller discrete goals, stepping stones to the big one.

When making my annual goals, I find the following categories helpful as a launching point: health/fitness, relationships, financial, career, spiritual/philosophical/personal growth, creative. Again, I highly recommend avoiding resolutions in favor of making concrete goals with deadlines. That gets the subconscious working out possible steps to achieving them on time.

Compare:

I resolve to make a lot more new art this year.  

to

I will complete my new portfolio by April 15^th.

And, yes, this is an actual one from my list.

Another goal I have is to see a snowy owl, up close, this year. I took this a few days ago with my phone... through a telescope. 

So close to success, but so far...Again. The snowy owl is my feathered white whale. Ok, so some goals are somewhat dependent on factors outside your control. But I can control how often I go birding and just how hard I’m willing to work to see the snowy. And you can do the same for your goals. No excuses!

3. The Fresh Fancy Journal

I use this each day to list my tasks and goals for the day, and it’s satisfying to tick them off one by one, have a record of what I’ve achieved, and get a lot done. So before New Year, I buy a high quality, beautiful journal. It takes me ages to choose usually, but my lovely daughter gave me this perfect one for Christmas. I write my year’s goals in the first few pages, so they are always at hand.

4. First Dawn

No matter how I celebrate New Year’s Eve itself, I always get up to watch the year’s first sunrise. (This morning it was well below freezing and I’d only had three hours sleep, but First Dawn was absolutely worth the numb nose and head-swimming fatigue.) 

Do you have special New Year rituals? I’d love to hear what they are and how you feel about goals and resolutions.

As I always do at this time of year, and in the spirit of making goals and keeping deadlines, I’m offering 20% off editing services contracted and deposit paid by January 31st, 2015. Editing services include: developmental editing, copyediting and proofreading, critiques, and writing instruction. Contract start can be on a future date, as long as it is by September 1^st, 2015. Contact me: wordybirdie AT gmail.com

Wishing you a wonderful 2015.

Musical Interlude, for the Winter Solstice

A pretty little something I've been enjoying on this dark first night of winter. This is Grizzly Man by Rockettothesky. 

Later, I will be reading The Longest Night, written by Marion Dane Bauer and illustrated by Ted Lewin (Holiday House, 2009). 

Possibly, my ten-year-old may think she's too old to listen, but she'll be wrong, and when it gets to the part with the chickadee, we'll sing together,

        "And dee and dee and dee," she sings.
        "And dee and dee, again."

You're never too old for a great picture book.

Happy Solstice, to you and yours!

Another Musical Interlude: Breathe

And another gift from Scandinavia, this time from Norway. This is Breathe by The White Birch. 

Yes, it's another melancholy one, but it's quite pretty and atmospheric, lovely triggers for writing hard in my experience. 

Shall we write hard on this dark December night, my fine feathered friends?

Musical Interlude: Olafur Arnalds

I've got to tell you, I love Spotify. It just keeps giving me good stuff. 

I often (not always) tend to like moody, melancholy stuff when I write, because it usually gets me into the zone very fast. Cello and piano really do it for me; those of you who read my blog already know what music I tend to put forth as good music for writing. 

This is what I'm listening to right now. It's working like a charm. And I like this video, too.

Does music work for you? And if so, what kind?

The Liberation of the “Shitty First Draft” (or Don’t Get Stuck in the Bog)

© Marlo Garnsworthy 2013

Years of editing have taught me a great deal about writing, and I’m very grateful for it. But an editor’s path can be a tricky one when it comes to writing her own book. As so many of you who are inclined toward self-editing will know, it’s so easy to get mired in the morass of perfecting each paragraph in chapters one to three, when you really know you should be leaping with abandon though the narrative.

Anne Lamott, in Bird By Bird, Some Instructions on Writing and Life (what’s not to love with a title like that?), speaks of the importance of allowing yourself to write “shitty first drafts”:

Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep       you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.  

Possibly you, like me, have more than one manuscript that has been well and truly stymied before the halfway mark by agonizing over individual scenes (or, more often, sentences) before you have the basic plot down. If one is lucky enough to feel the rush of love that comes with a new project, one should keep going and not fuss it to death a few steps in. There will be time enough for revision and the subtleties of each phrase later on. Plenty of time to fill in the richer details. Loads of time, in fact, as revision should be at least nine tenths of writing a book. (If you love revision and editing, as I do, that’s great news. But if you’re past the honeymoon phase with your project, or if you never really fell in love in the first place, you’d still be well advised to forge ahead and not edit. You’re already on the edge of a soul-sucking quagmire.)

I'm finding it's very freeing to allow yourself to write stuff that sounds awful (rather like this sentence). I’m taking my own advice on this project I started a few weeks ago, and I’m writing mad wonderful garbage. At least, if I were to read it as an editor, I’d think, “Oh dear, we do have quite a bit of work to do here, possibly starting with the basics of sentence construction, but there’s something special about the story.” But I’m not editing; I’m just getting scraps of scenes down. I’m letting characters say what they want to say even if it’s repetitive or nonsensical right now. I’m catching incomplete impressions, jotting unfinished and ridiculous sentences, and I’m ignoring my spellchecker until the end of each writing session. I’m letting the story reveal itself as I forge about it without stopping—and lo and behold, it is.  

The only time I’m returning to a paragraph is when something additional or better occurs to me in a flash of inspiration as I pass by it. I must admit there have been a few sentences that I have tweaked, but only—and this is the kicker—ONLY when a better way to say something comes to me as part of this naturally energized process, that is, only within the pure flow of inspiration. If I catch myself starting to fuss, I stop and move away from the paragraph or scene. Among other strategies and even more strategies I’ve discussed before, try simply scrolling through the manuscript or through your notes until something else catches your attention. Turn your focus to another scene altogether, whichever tugs you hardest, and then start writing forward afresh. 

Your draft might sound like muck, but you’ll be finding your way across the narrative terrain, though possibly chaotically. Sure, you might arrive muddy, disheveled, feathers askew, but you’ll be creating a map, almost by default, which you can later refine and revise. You’ll know the basic way, relatively quickly, and with MUCH more FUN. It doesn't mean you won’t write some dead-ends on your map along the way, because there will be some, of course. 

Move on through that mucky, messy, probably non-linear first draft, before the energy and the will to make the journey flee. Before you lose sight of what you really wanted to write about. Before the maps for possible plot-lines are so thick around you, you cannot see your way past them. Before you're afraid to even try. Don’t get bogged down planning the trip and what you might need along the way, or whether you even know where your story is going. Start somewhere (wherever you are is just fine), and just get on your way. Because it’s extraordinary how you tend to get where you want to go, if you keep your gaze fixed on the horizon, stare less at the stuff by the wayside... and just start writing.

Beyond the Wall of Terror

I’m not posting much these days. I started this blog to cure a wretched case of writer’s block, which wasn’t just affecting my writing. It was my visual art, too. It was my visual art especially, in fact, though I wasn’t getting any books finished, either. I’m in a very good creative place these days, and so my spare moments are easily filled with non-blogging creative activity.

But a little over two years ago, being back in this good creative place was all but impossible to imagine. Writing was—at best—difficult, and the mere thought of drawing or painting made me nauseous. I had grown frustrated and desperate creatively, and almost everything I tried to draw or paint (if I even dared try) seemed only to bolster those feelings. I was sitting slumped against the Wall of Terror that causes so much creative paralysis, trying to scramble over it, or using my head as a battering ram. Something had to give, and it was not going to be my desire to make things; it would have to be the Wall.

And then, quite suddenly, just when I really needed it, things began to shift.     

          

So much of my creative time since then has been about reaching out, opening up, and simply walking through the Wall. I’m finding it’s not that hard if you set a small goal and a firm deadline, and only focus on those. Having strong, like-minded allies is vital, too.

From illustration for NESCBWI poster contest 2013.

Sure, taking a chance, creating your soul out, and exposing your work can be as emotionally treacherous as they are joyful, but on this side of the wall is only stagnation, disappointment, and then bitterness. After all, if life’s end is your only deadline, you can have no concerns about making it.

I am off to the New England SCBWI regional conference on Friday, and I’m really looking forward to it. I’ve submitted a piece for the poster illustration competition. Huzzah! That fact alone speaks volumes. So if and when I reach it again, I must remember the Wall of Terror is like a membrane—stretchy, transparent, and porous; just look a little beyond it and push gently. 

The Path to Publication

Image by me.

Very recently, a writer asked me to be honest about whether he should continue to pursue writing or not. It’s not the first time I’ve been asked that question. It always catches me very off guard, but it does make me want to say what follows:

I’m really not the one you should be asking. 

It would be the height of arrogance and stupidity for me—or anyone else—to suggest someone not pursue writing. We all start somewhere, and we all have quite a learning curve. Everybody. If we write, it’s because we are writers. And so we must write (or paint or sculpt or garden or whatever) or shrivel up and die a bitter, strangled creative/spiritual death.

But should we ‘pursue’ it…which I assume really means ‘pursue publication’?

When I was a younger, less experienced editor (and probably thought I knew more than I did, as is natural), I worked with a gentleman who was determined to be an author. He was incredibly eager, earnest, and gung-ho, but he just seemed to be starting in a difficult place. His work seemed a bit… well, unpublishable. But he just wanted to keep trying, no matter what the critique.

And so he did.

We kept working together, multiple drafts of first one book  and then another, both of us learning much along the way. Beneath the unpublishable veneer of what he was doing, there was something wonderful and inspired and rich in what he thought and felt and cared about. But it was just all coming out in ways that were not working at all. In truth, I didn’t think his chances of ever getting published were very good. I was almost certain he wouldn’t, in fact, even though I wanted it for him. But he loved it and wanted it for himself, and that’s all he saw in front of him (or so it seemed to me). So no matter what, he just kept on.

I don’t know what ups and downs he went through on his private journey as a writer, but I guess they’re the ups and downs we all go through. The self-doubt and the frustration, the elation and late nights. All I saw was his consistent drive, the revising, the eagerness, the upbeat attitude, the desire, the focus, and the pleasant, grateful willingness to listen intently, to learn every single thing he could. When he was ready he let go of ideas he’d tried and which he now understood weren't working. He tried new things that incorporated new knowledge. He was willing and ego-free and hardworking.

And he quickly proved me wrong. He grew. His work became good, then really good (in my humble opinion). It was amazing and wonderful to watch. He soon did what I had not managed to do at that point: he found a publisher who wanted his book, signed the contract, and produced a very saleable story with a lovely heart and appealing vehicle. I’ve never seen a writer with such a short journey to (traditional) publication. (Sure, it took years, but not even close to double digits like most of us.) 

He might well have wondered if he’d ever be a published writer. He never discussed that with me. Yet he knew he would, no matter how long or how hard the journey. He was the only one he needed to ask. 

A Novel Update: Flowing

Cockatoo I chatted with in Australia.
See how happy she is?

I am on top of the world.

Sticking to this writing every day routine is doing wonderful things. I’m invested in my work and engaged by it. I look forward to it every day now, because most of the time it’s flowing. I’m sure that has a lot to do with my mental commitment to it.


The evening before last I actually found myself multitasking in a most extraordinary way: I was cooking dinner, Skype chatting with my mum, and writing furiously, all at the same time. That's when I know it's really flowing. Feels amazing.

And I did Something Really Big. I changed a major character’s name. It’s had a dramatic effect on him and on my story. I’ll share my thoughts about that soon.

2+ hours a day (or at least > one). 6+ days a week. It’s key.

Current word count: 31,007 (+4583)

Current state:

• solid short synopsis
• clear overarching plot in mind
• sketches for three illustrations
• solid beginning (with small gaps) and established voice…but this week it’s grown and changed. The beginning starts in a new place. It’s better.
• vastly messy middle with large gaps, clearer plot points, a growing number of characters, and various black holes but many fewer toward the end.
• and an ending! Even final a line!

Goal: A finished solid first draft by January 9th, 2013. 

Novel Update: The Key is Key!

http://www.allthingsdesigner.com.au/shop

One week ago told you I'd found the key. This week, further proof that the key works. It works, I’m telling you.

Actually sitting in front of a computer and making something go onto the screen every day—yeah, really every day even when you don’t really feel particularly like it but you know you’ve made apromise to do it and you’re accountable to a bunch of people who read your blog as well as yourself and let's face it you're a bit pig-headed about these things anyway so you do it except on your one day off which is at your discretion—actually produces results.

I know! Who would have thunk it? Astounding, but true.  

2+ hours a day (or > one). 6+ days a week. It’s key.

Current word count: 30,092 (+3668)

Current state:

• solid short synopsis
• clear overarching plot in mind
• sketches for two illustrations
• solid beginning (with small gaps) and established voice
• vastly messy middle with large gaps, clearer plot points, a growing number of characters, and various black holes but many fewer toward the end.
• and an ending! Even final a line!

Goal: A finished solid first draft by January 9th, 2013. 

A Novel Update

Image credit:
lifeparttwo.wordpress.com/2010/02/15/pileated-woodpecker

It's been one week, and I have easily kept to my new writing schedule, writing/drawing one or more (usually more) hours per day (except for my one evening off, which I spent working on paid work and wrapping birthday presents for my daughter!). It feels good, and it feels natural now I've made the mental commitment. 


Though progress seems slow in terms of word count, because I'm cutting and reworking as I go, it's gratifying to know I'm doing something every day to peck away at my goal. 

Current word count: 27,786  (+1362)

Current state: 

• solid short synopsis
• clear overarching plot in mind
• sketches for two illustrations (+1)
• solid beginning (with fewer gaps) and established voice
• vastly messy middle with large gaps, unclear plot points, too few characters, and various black holes 
• nebulous but forming ending. 

Goal: A finished solid first draft by January 9th, 2013. 

Please feel free to join me and post your word count or project state updates in the comments. We're all in this together. It'll be fun! 

Learning Things

This postcard has become one of my most treasured material possessions, and I have carried it since I first picked it up in a coffee shop in 2002. Wherever I have hollowed out a little space for myself, I have stuck it on the wall at eye level. It’s a good reminder.

I’ve started a list of little learning things I intend to make my way through this year. It’s in keeping with my renewed fervor for goal setting and creativity scheduling—which I’ve promised myself I will value and adhere to as strictly as my paid-work schedule. It’s all an investment in what I truly love, part allowing of more steady forward motion and part swift kick in the posterior.  

For example, because confidently constructing a plot is my Achilles’ heel, I have a few books in my reading pile:

• Plot by Ansen Dibell (Elements of Fiction Writing series. Writer’s Digest Books)
• Plot & Structure by James Scott Bell (Write Great fiction series. Writer’s Digest Books).
• Advanced Plotting by Chris Eboch… an eBook that was recommended by Janet S.Fox, and since I was so thrilled by her talk at NESCBWI's regional last year, I trust that it will be good. 

What’s on your learning list this year? 

New Year

I love the last few days of a year. On these days you can be sure to find me clearing out my work-space, stuffing stuff in bags for the charity bin, pulling out couches and sucking up the dust beavers (much bigger and toothier than dust bunnies). You’ll also find me thinking and reflecting and writing on the first pages of a new journal I’ve spent time choosing, making resolutions and setting goals—or rather, making my New Year’s List.

There’s something about putting things in writing. We are writers, most of us here, and as writers we are well aware of what it is to pour ourselves into our writing. There’s something very scary, very revealing of our inner selves, and utterly intoxicating about expressing ourselves through words, through characters we’ve created, and putting it down on paper instead of just daydreaming. It’s a real commitment.

I think it’s the same kind of thing with a New Year’s List. That’s how it feels for me, anyway. I get very excited about it. I’ve been doing it since I was eight when I first heard of New Year’s resolutions. I have rituals. It’s something I hold sacred. And funnily enough, many people don’t understand when I tell them about it or they chuckle about it. They think I’m cute (or possibly crazy. Or maybe both).

But, that’s ok. That’s water off a duck’s back. Other people’s amusement has never worried me one bit, because I know that people who write lists and commit things to paper where they can clearly see them tend (more often than those who don’t) to get things done. And I like to get things done. (That’s why the first thing I do each morning is make a list of that day’s stuff-to-do. There’s something very comforting in breaking life’s daily complexity into small manageable chunks, not to mention fully satisfying as they get ticked off).

It’s a very powerful act—making written goals and sticking them somewhere you can see them, somewhere they can nag at you, or, perhaps more powerfully, where others can see them and nag at you. A New Year’s List is like a good, supportive crit group: it can keep you focused, keep you accountable, and keep you real. (It can’t hug you hard when you’re down or sincerely revel in your joy like a good crit group, though. So if you don’t have a good crit group, perhaps that should be first thing on your List.)

Anyway, here goes. My writing/creating goals this coming year, 2012:

• Finish a solid first draft of my middle grade novel.
• Continue to draw and once again explore my visual art, like, you know, really often.
• Be a consistently supportive crit group member in a consistent and supportive way.
• Be a good editor. Be a good teacher. Continue to care. Work Hard.
• Just keeping doing my thing. Keep having a good time on paper, not really contemplating the future, letting the fluff and stuff pass me by, just focusing on my ultimate goal.

Now I’m accountable, see? And that fires me up! It’s an exciting year beginning, brand new and full of promise. Can’t you feel it?

Thank you for reading Wordy Birdie and a very Happy New Year to you and yours!

Post in Which You Meet My Handsome Cello.

This is my cello. See how he sits there against my studio wall, surrounded by More Important Things? Watch how he admonishes me silently from his stand. Look closely, maybe you can see the dust there on his shoulders, the reproach in that lovely costume eye-patch he’s sporting. Yet each time I pass him or glance his way, a small feisty part of me is quite convinced that if I picked him up and played him, something exquisite would pour through me along the bow, into the strings and body, and spill forth singing and sonorous, resonant and ethereal. It will just spring from us almost unbidden, effortlessly, with great passion. The experience will feel transcendent.  

But it’s a complex act, playing a cello, and my playing, when I got round to it today, did not sound good.

There are many technical complexities in cello playing, and that’s before you even think about the artistry or the soul of the piece of music. I do know just how tight my bow should be, and I can tune my instrument perfectly. I can pick out an interesting melody and sometimes even hit the right note. I sound almost terrific when I am wearing big headphones and playing along to some *loud* cello music. But my small knowledge is far from enough. 

Playing the cello is something I’d really like to do well, but it’s not on my urgent list. I do feel more strongly about it than learning to blow glass or use a pottery wheel or surf and other things I’d quite like to do but could never hope to teach myself. I probably should take some cello lessons and practice every day, and I will when I have the time, money, and desire. 

In the meantime playing the cello is really hard and not always fun, in fact. Actually, it’s a lot like writing (c’mon, you knew where I was going with this). However, I can readily laugh off how bad I sound as I drag bow across strings and still happily fantasize about one day being listenable. I know I’m not my screechy cello playing, anymore than I am my excellent scone baking skills or my tragic inability to sew. But that’s hard to do with your writing, isn’t it? If our writing isn’t good, we feel it in our core as some terrible damning exposition of what’s deepest and most wonderful (or wrong) within us. Indeed,if I aspired to be the next Yo Yo Ma, I imagine the way I play the cello would be upsetting.

The thing is, we all understand it takes many lessons, a full understanding of tools, and many years of dedicated daily practice and fine tuning of artistry to become a concert musician—and yet we think we should be accomplished writers the moment we sit down to write, and then again each time we write. And when we fear that’s not happening, we quake at the thought of critiques. We shiver at the thought of sharing, of exposing our work and ourselves. We get really bloody frustrated. We let our writing and passion catch dust.

Does that make any sense at all?

All published writers have a long learning curve before they actually "make it." Everyone’s first attempts and early drafts sound like caterwauling cellos. So practice and play, be happy you’re on your way. One day, you will be a maestro. 

Strange Energy

It’s an acutely uncomfortable feeling sometimes, the need to write or create. Sometimes it sneaks up on you, niggling as a vague unease, a creeping inability to sit still or focus, a repeated pragmatic thought that it ‘must be the weather.’ Sometimes it’s disguised as an escalating resentment toward a waiting pile of bills, thoughts of negative energy between you and someone you care about, or the memory of some past hurt—and other times it just carries some essence of those things.

At such times you may resort to doing the dishes, at least, since you can’t settle on anything else on your to-do list. But even though you wash the dishes and clean the kitchen counters and scrub the floor on your hands and knees till it gleams, they’re still there. Words eager to be written.

That energy has to express itself somehow. Carry a notebook, use it, and call it 'Sweet Relief.' Or blog. Then chuckle. Then get back to your WIP. 

Permission

As an often-blocked writer and writing teacher, I think a great deal about process and the conditions required for us to write, keep writing, and write well. So much of writing (or perhaps any creative endeavor) is about ignoring, overcoming, or otherwise harnessing one’s basic personality flaws and/or neuroses.

For me, like many writers, it’s a fear of my stuff never being as good as I want it to be that sometimes stops me not long after I’ve begun. But as the inimitable Katherine Paterson said in her keynote address at the SCBWI winter conference a few years ago:

"I knew that if I didn't dare failure, or worse, mediocrity, I would never be a writer at all."

These words will stay with me always. But becoming a writer is not just about daring mediocrity. And it’s not just about hard work.

What it might really all boil down to is permission, the permission we give ourselves to:

·         Make a space (physical, emotional, time) that is reserved for writing and creating

·         Request our loved ones respect that space

·         Ignore the growing pile of dishes in the sink and the dusky hue of the usually pale kitchen floor  

·         Spend the money on the tools/equipment/memberships/conferences needed

·         Pull over on the highway when our characters begin to whisper, pull out our notebooks in the supermarket’s dairy aisle, stop and listen and take notes

·         Go for a run or a walk or a drive or a shower if that’s what it takes to get them whispering

·         Unplug the router, to turn off the phone/TV,  give the social media a rest

·         Put the research away in favor of the writing

·         Go to crit group and share

·         March to the beat of our own drums

·         Fail

·         Try again and again and again

·         Succeed

·         Enjoy it all

At some point in a writing career, the permission of others (agents, publishers, buying audience, etc.) becomes important too, but well before that it’s our own permission that matters. When you’re a person with a career and family responsibilities and all the things a modern person has to deal with, giving oneself permission can be extremely difficult. But really, aren’t we the only ones accountable to ourselves for the choices we make?

So if we don’t give ourselves full permission to be happy, successful writers and to undertake all that journey entails, it’s unlikely we’ll ever get anywhere.

How do you give yourself permission to write/create? How do you deny yourself permission?

Dictionaries and Divine Madness

Do you ever have that situation where you suddenly wonder how to spell a word, a word you suddenly and achingly really need, because only it is the one that describes what you’re trying to say, so you pick up your Merriam-Webster’s Collegiate or your Concise Oxford—or probably your Brewer’s Dictionary of Phrase and Fable, because you really like that one best and it’s so full of fun words that you might happily get stuck reading for the next two hours when you should be writing—but because you know you shouldn’t be breaking the flow of your fabulous Stream of Consciousness writing by stopping to look something up in the dictionary, let alone editing what you’ve written previously instead of getting on with the actual plot (*Plot!*? Did someone say *Plot!*?) for the last fifteen minutes—which you did even though you know it’s Death to Progress—but then you find the word you were looking up in the dictionary ISN'T actually LISTED, even though you’ve used it all your life even (*amused horror*) at that embassy dinner you found yourself at years ago, so you start to wonder if you’re going batty and pick up your Chambers Dictionary of Etymology, certain that this Great Book will dispel your confusiosity and put your fears of lunacy and early dementia to rest, only to find that it ISN’T THERE EITHER and perhaps it was, in fact, one of those made-up words particular to your family, like ‘moggies’ which means ‘little rocks’ or ‘pebbles,’ or ‘bratters’ which are dowels, or or ‘bears’ and ‘windies’ which are code for farts, , so determined to settle this stupefying enigma once and for all, you turn the wireless router back on to Google it, even though you have a writing PACT with your writing-PACT-partner not to turn it on until at least 9:30, but it’s only 8:38, but you absolutely need to know if the word ***** really exists?


And then, you find your fruitless search for that oh-so-familiar word— a search which was really a diversion for having nothing to say and a possible new case of Writer’s Block—ends up dispelling said case of case Block, even if it just did result in another blog post. (Except for the bits you had to black out because you knew you were going to use them in your novel, the one you’ve been stuck on for a really long time.)


That happens to you, too, right?