Something out of nothing

I finally got around to watching this TED Talk by Amy Tan about where creativity lies.  She makes some great points about the serendipitous nature of creativity that really resonated with me so I thought I would share.  If you have 20 minutes and are so inclined:

Life is good right now.  In fact, life is great.  I feel awesome, am back in a schedule doing so many things I love: writing lots, teaching yoga, practicing yoga, hanging out with friends and my best friend and life-mate, good old Mr. Peters.  I'm just really grateful to be right here.

I'm feeling really good about the revisions I'm going through in this next draft of my book and confident that I'll be done with this draft very soon.  Then...(duh, duh, duh) it will truly be time to send it out!  It's taken me a LONG TIME to get even close to this stage (much longer than most writers I think, from what I read in the blogosphere), but I haven't given up!  It's been a good 10 years since I committed to the idea of writing stuff for people to read and I'm really thrilled I've kept at it.

Yesterday I was in a bathroom and I cam across this:

Thoreau's quote made me smile because, after all this time, I can't believe that's still the direction I'm going in. I've had a lot of help and a lot of love from people to keep me on track, but reading this I'm reminded that patience really pays off.  I haven't realized a lot of my dreams yet, but because I'm going in their direction I feel like I'm living them.  And when I'm out of my head and in my body, when I'm breathing in the present moment, I realize that if you're living any stage of your dream, in some facet you're already there.

So, my dear ones, GO CONFIDENTLY! You may just end up realizing the life you've imagined for yourself is happening right now.

Throw up the dirt

Perhaps the title of this post seems rather strange, but I was talking to a friend earlier today and explaining how I feel like someone has stuck their huge hands into the earth of my life and thrown all the soil up into the air.  Now I'm just waiting for all of it to fall back to the ground.

Gosh there's so much I want to write about — so much on my heart, but since my blogging has been so sporadic these past few months I thought perhaps just writing about writing would be a good place to start.

I read the draft of the novel I finished last July. The time away from it has been invaluable.  Because of it, I was able to see so many things that I wasn't able to before.  I wouldn't say I was able to read it just as any third-party reader, but I was removed enough that I could SEE IT.  I could see the story underneath the places where I was getting in the way.

Maybe to some seeing all those obstructions would be discouraging — but I feel relieved.  Why? Because now I have an idea of what I need to do to make it better.

And more than anything, more than absolutely anything, I want this book to be the best that it can be.

Sure, perhaps it will never make it into the world and find readers all its own, but at least I will have done it the honour of chipping away at its dirt.  Then hopefully it can be what its truly meant to be, and I can take the lessons and begin all over again.

I did it! And with time to spare?

So this is the bottle of champagne my insanely amazing husband popped last night (and beside it a gift my insanely amazing husband bought me one time when I was sad).  Why the champagne?

 Around 11:30 PST on April 1, I finished a novel.  What?  No, this isn't an April Fool's joke.  I actually finished a novel, from start to finish, in three months!

This is a huge accomplishment for me.  I've written two novels before this one.  The first (which will never see the light of day) took me a year to write.  The second, (Book 1 in the series I'm now writing) took about 10 months to write the first draft.  And then I spent another five years (yes you read that right) rewriting that first draft.

Okay, so I had a full time-job then and I lived close to my large family and decent sized group of friends, which meant the distractions were endless and the time was more limited, but still.

THREE MONTHS!?!?  Honestly I didn't think I was capable of doing it.  Now through the ROW80 writing challenge I participated in, from January to the end of March, I realize with just hitting a smallish word count goal per day I can do a lot more much quicker!

I also have to say, in my last week of writing away, coffee was a big help.  I never drink coffee.  It usually makes me crazy.  But I sacrificed the crazies (well, I didn't actually go crazy this time) to help fuel some serious speed writing, especially near the end.

Is the book good?  No, it's probably terrible.  There are holes, and weird plot things going on and some overall bad prose.  But it's a first draft.  And what's my new motto for a first draft?

Get it written.  Then get it right!  (I read that recently in this book).

And there you have it.

Now I am officially taking a bit of a break, which also means a bit of a break from blogging.

During this break I plan to just feel the joy and gratitude of making it to this accomplishment, because despite the worry that I'm wasting my life on something that may never become what I hope it will be, I'm grateful I get to try.

And to all of you out there — most of whom I know personally and perhaps a few that I don't — thank you for your support.  Thank you for your love.  And thank you for helping me hold on to this dream of mine, regardless of how many years go by.

Great big love to you all xx

Making the final check-in

Wait! #ROW80...I'm here.  Out of breath and panting but I'm here to deliver my final check-in.

I've been off the blogging grid for almost three weeks now....first because I had a number of visitors and then because I opted for working on my writing goals instead of blogging about them in the last hours of the first round of #ROW80.

But before this round ends I wanted to just put in how far I made it with my goals, and to send so much gratitude out to Kait Nolan and this writing challenge and as well to the sponsors and every other ROWer who came to encourage and visit my blog.  It was also fun getting to visit some of yours!

So, for a recap of my goals:

Through Kait's advice, I started out by chopping my original goal in half.  I know I can write between 2,000 and 3,000 words when I'm trying, so doing as Kait said, I made my #ROW80 goal to write 1,000/day, five days a week, and have this also translate into 5,000 words/week.

It didn't take me long to realize that this was the best goal I ever set for myself.  Through the first two months of #ROW80 I was meeting or surpassing this goal every week — and sometimes only writing four days instead of five.

It's been SUCH an eye-opener for me.  Before this, I would set these massive goals for myself and I would never accomplish them and there would be a lot of self-hate involved and defeatism.  Then, along came #ROW80 to show me that I can actually set smaller goals for myself (and this was MUCH smaller by my standards) and then...I would actually end up getting MORE done than with any of the big goals I've ever set for myself!

I had to take a week and a bit off in February to go see family in Vancouver, and then I had some visitors, but by the time I came back to write I looked at how much I had done so far for #ROW80 and saw that I had written 35,000 words in 6 weeks!!  Now, add this to the 5,000 words I'd already had before the writing challenge started and that put me at 40k!

I realized then, that if I worked hard, if I played my cards right, I could actually finish this novel!!!

So I upped my goals.  2,000 words/day, five days a week — translating into 10,000 words per week.

Now, this goal, I learned quickly was much harder for me to achieve.  I felt burnt out by the end of the week and if I missed a day it was much harder to make up the extra word count if I fell behind.  Still, I made it to 9,800 words the first week and 9,000 words the second.

Something I also started doing through this challenge is keeping track of my daily word count on an excel file — and I highly recommend this.

Then I reached 60,000 words and I just said $%^$ it...now I've just go to get through these last chapters and get this thing done.  So I've been writing day and night — as much as I can.

I must say I'm also motivated by the fact I'm going to Toronto for two weeks, leaving April 3.  So the deadline I've given myself for finishing this novel is actually April 2 (after ROW).  So I am still writing away...

But where am I on this last day? 72k baby!  And I've got about five or six chapters left to write....in 6 days.  Can I make it?  Maybe?

I'm not putting too much pressure on myself.  I haven't been feeling that great this last week or so, so even though I'm working, it's not as easily as I would like.....but I'm just going to keep going and hope I make it — if I don't, I don't.  I'll be pretty much done anyways and I'll only have a chapter or two to write when I get back if I don't make it.

All I can say now is how grateful I am that I found this challenge.  Kait Nolan, I am so grateful to you for creating a challenge for writers who have a life. Thank you!  I'm grateful for the lesson you taught me that just doing a bit each day can actually bring me further in the end than going after a huge goal.

Thank you ROWers for all your support and for sharing your own writing challenges and goals with me.  In these past three months I've pretty much written a novel and I'm smiling from ear to ear, looking at the writing world a little differently (in a good way) and so excited for how this challenge will shape my productivity in the future.

Alas, I cannot join #ROW80 for the second round....I'll be travelling too much in April and May.

I leave you then, with IMMENSE gratitude, the possibility of knowing that I may join ROW80 again in the future, and an almost-written-novel I shall now return to.

Good luck everyone participating in the second round, and good luck to all writers, everywhere, near and far.

So far so good

I ended up with a total of 9,818 words, written over four days for my first week of upping my goals.  That's 182 words away from my new weekly goal of 10,000 words, and I accomplished this writing over just four days instead of five.

Can't say I'm disappointed with it.

If I can keep going like this until I leave for my trip to Toronto, April 3, I will have written a novel in three months!  I want to reach this goal.  It would be absolutely stupendous if I reach this goal.  I'm hopeful I can get there but I don't want to say I will for sure.

For one this is because it was a lot harder for me to write 10,000 words this week then my ROW80 average of about 6,000 words/week.  The second reason is we've got visitors coming, two sets — arriving Wednesday and leaving Sunday, so this will make reaching word count a little more difficult with only three weeks and a few days left to reach my goal.

But what I promise myself is that, to the very best of my ability, I am going to work towards my 2,000 words per day, five days a week goal.  I'm going to treat each day as a new day and each day I'm just going to do what I can to get to where I want to go.  If it happens, awesome.  If it doesn't,  I'm going to try not to be too hard on myself and the next day I'm going to try again.

Last week I ended up doing no writing on Tuesday and so added to my word count goals for the rest of the week.  This works, but as I've learned it makes each writing day a little harder.  If I have to do this I will, but again it's not ideal.

Still if I am able to accomplish this goal and finish this novel by April 2, that will be such a HUGE accomplishment for me.  I've written two novels before this one, the first took me a year.  The second took me, well, let's just say YEARS.  Granted I was working longer hours then (and not on a freelance basis), but still, if I do this it will be such an awesome improvement.

And even if I only almost make it there it will still be a huge improvement.  But I can taste the end of this frist draft and boy do I want to devour the whole thing!!!

Good luck all you fellow ROW80ers this week!  Happy writing. 

It's not midnight yet on the West Coast!

Phew! It's been a busy week and I feel like I'm juggling a lot of things, several balls in the air, but still I'm keeping up with my goals as much as I can so I've got to be happy with that and I am.

I wanted to write a post that spoke about more than just my ROW80 goals but we had some folks over today for the Super Bowl and it was fun that meant being away from the computer...but fun is never a bad thing, right?  Especially when you've still made your gaols.

I wrote a total of 6,413 words this week — 1,413 words over my weekly goal.  Woohoo!

I did only write four days instead of five though.  Since I'm now assisting with the yoga teacher training this takes another day away from me so if I'm busy with other work during the week I don't have as much time on the weekend to make it up.

But I'm perfectly okay with that, especially if I'm still making (and sometimes surpassing) my word count goal.

It's also been great to visit some of your blogs and see what you're up to and learning about the lessons and adventures we're going through thanks to ROW80 and writing and life!


Wishing you all a great week ahead!

Here we are again, so soon?

Another ROW80 check-in already?  Wow, I feel like these things are going to continue to sneak up on me pretty fast!

Last night was my first official, "that's it I'm not writing tonight day."  Only my second week, second day, and already I decided to take the night off.  I'm doing my best not to be hard on myself, for two reasons: First, I have a good chunk of time on my hands today so I plan to use it to make up for my word count goal of 1,000 words lost yesterday and write 2,000 words today.  It's not unheard of for me to write that in about three hours or so, so I should be okay.

Second (and here comes the excuses), I had a busy day yesterday and more than anything parts of it were emotionally draining for me.  I know one day I'll probably come clean and talk about exactly what this thing is — that has been so trying on me emotionally, spiritually and even physically — especially because since having gone through this thing I realize there's a lot of silence around it and that makes dealing with it even harder.

I know, I know, why am I being so elusive then?  It's because I'm just not ready to come out and talk about it all I guess.

So for the meantime, what you know is that I'm going through something and this something will sometimes take me away from my writing and I'm giving myself permission to go through all the emotions of it and if I need to, sit on my couch and watch the new episode of Downton Abbey instead of getting in a few hours of writing.

And so already we have a kink in the chain....but that's life right?  Isn't this the writing challenge that knows we've all got one?

I'm trying to believe, in spite of everything, that I'm still stepping up — because I haven't given up, because I'm still devoting time to what I love to do.

By the way, here's some inspiration from Alan Watts on that, in case you haven't seen this video already, thought I'd share:

Sunday Funday

Excuse the cliche please, but this is what my Sunday is today.  Why, you ask?  Because I've made my ROW80 goals for the week!

I only have one goal, and that's 1,000 words a day, five days a week.  When I made that goal I took Kait Nolan's advice and cut my original goal in half and posted that as my ROW80 challenge.  I have to say, I felt a tiny twinge of uncertainty for a goal of only 1,000 words per writing session but as I've said before, my issue in 2012 was setting this grand sweeping goal that became unattainable for me in light of the rest of my life that I have to (gladly) live and ultimately was a failure.

Now I am so over that tiny twinge.  In fact, it's turned into a warm glow.  Here's what I wrote for the week, copied from excel (I'm keeping track!).

07-Jan	1369
08-Jan	1200
09-Jan	1200
10-Jan	700
12-Jan	1132

So as you can see on January 10 I only got to 700 (I had a very busy day that day) BUT all the other days I went past my word count goal to reach a total of 5601 for the week — 600 words OVER my total word count goal for the week.

Ideally I'd like to write more, but I was super busy with work assignments and I can't complain about that.  Other weeks I won't be and on those weeks I hope to write more.

The point is that I can't be hard on myself, nor do I even feel like being.  I met my goal!  I made writing a priority for a length of time, five days a week and because of that I made headway on my WIP and that is what's most important to me.

So today I get to do some cooking for the week and just hang out — with my hubby, with a book (I'm reading The Hobbit for the very first time if anyone wants to comment on that), with some television, and doing some laid back Internet surfing (made it to yoga this morning too).

Also usually I like to do one gratitude blog post a week, so here's just a big old Thank You to ROW80 AND to the writers who have visited my blog this week and offered their stories and encouragement.  I cannot express how cool it is to all of sudden feel not so alone in my writerly pursuits.  So thank you!  I plan on continuing to check out other ROW80 folks and offering my support right back!

Happy Sunday people.  Hope you're enjoying yours! 

On Ganesha and how you handle an obstacle in your path

It's not even a week since New Years day and I'm feeling really good about things, really grateful.  I've had some good freelance work come in, my yoga practice feels great and I've been cooking delicious, healthy food and gobbling it up.

I know this is the easy part though.  I'm feeling motivated and things are organized — so checking off the things on the list is a joy and goes by in a breeze.

The challenge will really come when I'm not feeling motivated, when life throws something in my way.

Even though Ganesha (the dude in the picture) is known as the remover of obstacles, a yoga teacher said in an online class I took a few weeks ago that he actually likes to put something in your way when you're on the wrong path.

I like that idea.  It follows along with the "everything happens for a reason" motto.  So I'm putting the idea in the memory bank (and on this blog in case the memory bank teller goes on vacation) for the next time Ganesha — or the universe, or your dead uncle harry, or God (however you like to word it) — puts a big old bolder in my way, or a pebble in my shoe, or a bump in the sidewalk.

Because I know these things will happen.  It's part of life.

Still, I'm not sitting around waiting...

I've hit above my word count goals for the first two days of ROW80 and most likely will again tonight.  The writing is going pretty smoothly right now since I decided to begin Book 2 again from scratch after writing 20,000 words of it and feeling like something big just wasn't working.  Now that I've figured out what that something big is I feel a lot more comfortable going forward.

Have you ever had that feeling — when you've started something but you feel like something's not right?  And then instead of that feeling going away it just turns into neon flashing lights in your brain — often without a decipherable message?

That's always been a signal for me (not that it happens all the time) to turn around, go back the way I came, and figure out an alternate route.

Or maybe you're a plough on through person?  The kind that knows he/she may have made a couple of dents or blunders along the way but is perfectly content going back and fixing them, and then fixing everything else so the whole thing fits together.

I'm sure there's pluses or minuses to either approach.  Part of writing, part of life, is making mistakes and there's always more than one way to fix them, I think.  Don't you?

Just don't give up....as Kristen Cashore says, never surrender!

Why don't we give this a try?

Just when I said I wasn't going to declare any kind of writing goal on my blog I found something that's really got me inspired.

Not sure if any of you have heard of NaNoWriMo before? It's a writing challenge that comes about in November where writers all buckle down and try to write a novel in a month.  Some are successful, some are not.  I almost tried to do NaNoWriMo once, but things got in the way.  What I didn't like about the challenge is it didn't help me to make writing a daily habit - which is what I wanted (and still want) most.

And then, I swear in some sort of kismet way, last week I stumbled across A Round of Words in 80 Days.  It's like this writing challenge was made just for me! If you read my last blog post, it speaks to all the reasons why I didn't set a big sweeping writing goal for myself this year.

With this writing challenge you set a writing goal of your choosing and must try to keep it up for 80 days.  BUT....the challenge encourages you to set a small writing goal — one that is easily attainable for you and will get you in the habit of writing. Also, you don't have to stick to the same goal throughout the 80 days.  If things in your life change, if for some reason you need to adjust your commitment — you can adjust.  As it says on the A Round of Words blog — this is the writing challenge that knows you have a life!  I love that! Especially because I often forget (or try to ignore) that part when I'm setting my goals.

The other part I love is that you check in for the writing challenge twice a week by posting on your on blog — so this also encourages more blogging.  Seriously, I truly feel this challenge was made for me (even though this isn't the challenges first year).  Also, A Round the Word in 80 days does this challenge four times a year.  So cool.

So here I go.  Here's my small writing challenge — I truly hope it sticks!

I pledge to write AT LEAST 1,000 words a day, five days a week. I don't know if this sounds like a small number or a big number to others but I can write more than that in a small stretch usually — but what I really want here is to get in the habit of writing most days.  Does this mean I stop writing when I reach 1,000 words?  No. But if I can get in this habit of writing AT LEAST this, five days a week.  I'm gold.

I'm pretty busy with other things in January and February, so I hope to actually increase my word count in March for the last stretch.  I will also have to take a slight break in February because I have to do some travelling but what's important is right now and right now my goal is 1,000 words a day, five days a week.  I'll be checking in with updates on my blog Wednesday's and Sundays.

Here goes! 

Another blank canvas

Last year I set BIG! goals for myself.  (Now insert unrealistic where you see BIG!).

I've gone through being frustrated and hard on myself about it — to feeling kind and forgiving.  I had no idea what 2012 had in store for me — that I'd be much busier with other things than I knew when I set said goals.  I wouldn't trade that business.   I wouldn't take back the other parts of the year that filled my life with new experiences and new work and joy and even sorrow.  It's what made the year.  It's what makes me, even now.

So now it's 2013 and even though I didn't get to everything I hoped I would in my writing life for 2012, it's time to start again.

Do I have writing goals?  Sure do.

I've got word count goals in mind.  I have promises to stay away from television and internet surfing that I've made to myself.  These mundane writerly goals are important, and that's why I'm noting them here — but they're not what really counts I've learned.

So I want this to be the year I find greater strength.  I want this to be the year I find greater commitment, devotion and also greater patience.  I want this to be the year that my writing turns out better than any year before.

I'm not sure how exciting any of that sounds but it's my truth.  I'm not even sure how these goals will help me to be productive without a concrete execution plan in place, but I'm ready to try a new approach.  I'm willing to see if doing it this way will bring me closer to the dreams I'm never giving up on.

Anyone with me?

Let's take away the things you can measure in pounds and inches, pages and word counts, dollars and cents, cholesterol levels, hours and minutes. Take all that away and ask yourself what you really want for 2013?

It's another blank canvas people.