Getting Back in the Groove

I had five very simple goals for the new year.  They included running 1000 miles during the year, writing every day, and getting organized (including keeping my house clean).  I’ve stayed on track with running only.  My inability to get organized  has hindered my ability to write every day.  This weekend I was determined to get back on track.  I spent part of Friday fashioning a very specific list of things to accomplish.  I like lists.  I like crossing things off those lists even more.

By the end of the weekend, I was exhausted, but pleased.  I accomplished a good portion of the tasks.  I fixed the deadbolt knob that keeps falling off.  I cleaned the house to 85% satisfaction (which is satisfactory).  I did the laundry. I wrote.  I did a blog post for this blog. I edited photos for four posts. I felt accomplished.

The best part of this exercise was that I felt re-energized to write.  Finally.  I have been in such a slump lately.  In a three-week span, I think I wrote maybe three times.  I was definitely beating myself up about it.  But I just couldn’t force myself to go upstairs and write for thirty minutes.  I’d had some ideas about reworking a main part of the story, but I wasn’t sure how to go about doing it.  I realized that having that uncertainty hanging over my head was a big part of why I didn’t want to write.  I didn’t know which direction the story was going in. I had to figure that out before I could do anything else.

So I spent part of Saturday doing just that.  I thought while I scrubbed, dusted, and swept.  The lightbulb finally went off, and the words and ideas have been flowing out like water from a faucet.  I thought of a few ideas for short stories and personal essays.  I’ve always had trouble finishing short stories.  I start with a concept and it quickly derails.  I think it’s because I just start writing with no sense of what the goal is.  For me, short stories need more structure.  It’s OK to have an outline.  I have high hopes for these ideas.

I feel like I’m finally back in the groove.  Here’s to hoping I can stay there.

Pins and Needles

I have really never been a very patient person, and I have been doing a lot of waiting lately. I’m not handling it all that well. I become obsessed with thinking about it, check my email incessantly, and grab my phone as soon as I get back to my office to see if anyone called. It’s unhealthy. I know. But I’m not likely to change.

The thing that has me the most nervous right now is the writing workshop I applied for. Yes, I finally made myself sit down and write a short story (this is why I have been MIA for so long – that and a mini-vacation). It was an insightful process. Honestly, I don’t know that I’ve ever written a work of fiction that was that long. I’m sure that I had creative writing assignments in my high school English classes, but I’m sure they weren’t almost 300o words (2,918 to be precise). I am fairly certain that I wrote no works of fiction when I was in college. As a business major I think I had to take freshman English and that was it. It never occurred to me to take a class outside of my major just because I might enjoy it (at least, one that all my friends weren’t taking also, like bass fishing…yeah, true story). So, to actually finish a story of such length is an accomplishment for me, and I am patting myself on the back.

Accomplishment that it may be, I still really want to get into the workshop! I keep wondering how many people applied. Did he get a flood of writing samples at the last minute? The application deadline was yesterday, and the professor emailed me and said he would get back to me in a day or so. I have been trying to define what constitutes “or so” since I got the email (see paragraph 1). But the course starts next Wednesday, so I don’t have that much longer to wait.

I’ve decided, though, that I’ll be OK if I don’t get in. Writing the story lit a fire under me. I wasn’t 100% in love with what I wrote, but as a first attempt, I’m pretty proud of it. The writing process itself was kind of a rush. I don’t want to stop. I’ve already started thinking about other ideas for short stories. I’ll keep you posted on how it all turns out!

Stuck

I have been feeling a bit stuck lately. I’m not sure what my next step should be. After the huge let-down of not getting that job, I have been a bit crabby and depressed. I have been spending more time at work because I need to make up for July’s below-average billables (this was not because I was not working – rather, the law clerks were getting all of the new projects and I literally had nothing to do. Hard to earn any money when you are paid by hour you bill). I did create a website for my photography business, but what I really want to focus on is writing a short story.

One of the colleges in town is offering a creative writing workshop for members of the community. You don’t have to be a student of the university and anyone can apply. A professor teaches the workshop, you are given assignments, and it’s only $200. However, the course is limited to 15 students and you have to apply by submitting a writing sample. While the requirements are “no more than 15 pages”, I know that I probably need only 3000-5000 words. I keep telling myself it should be easy to do, yet I can’t make myself sit down and try writing. I can’t even think of a good idea to write about.

The applications are due September 15. I had hoped to get something started this weekend, but here we are at the close of Sunday and I haven’t even opened my word processing program. I did, however, manage to bill 7.9 hours. Something seems a bit off there, don’t you think?

The Enchanted Forest

When I was a kid, I was always envious of my friends that lived in the country, surrounded by trees run through with interesting paths that I was certain would lead to some magical land.  I thought for  certain that if I lived near a forest, wonderful things would happen to me.  Don’t get my wrong, my house was pretty cool too, and my overactive creative imagination had plenty to work with.  For instance, our swing set doubled as a circus tent or (depending on the day) a mystery club hideout with secret entrances (modeled after the hideout in a series of young adult mystery books, the title of which escapes me and Google is of no help).  I used to crawl underneath the monster honeysuckle bushes that lined the fence around our pool and imagined an entire village existed under there.  I could go on, but I’m afraid you might already think I’m a little nuts.

As I got older, my imagination remained active, but I put it towards more productive uses – i.e., homework assignments.  However, I continued to love mystery novels and stories that truly drew you in and made you feel as if you were really a part of what was going on.  For instance, I love Harry Potter.  I read those stories over and over again. (Yeah, I’m in my 30s, so what?)  My fascination with a thick grove of trees hasn’t waned, either.  I can walk through the woods and my thoughts start running in overdrive.  I feel like I could write an entire novel based upon the feelings, sights, and sounds that wash over me in a period of just five minutes.

When I was a senior in high school, I went to visit my step-sisters in San Diego.  I fell in love with the city almost immediately, and while I loved the beaches and ocean (of course), they took me to these unbelievable forests with paths that led to enormous, ancient trees with rope swings.  To this day, I can remember what those woods looked like and how I felt as we explored them (without having to look at the pictures, which I have plenty of).  I vowed during that trip that I would move to San Diego after college and frequent those paths.

Now, fifteen years later, I still live in the midwest, I rarely visit our state forests, and my imagination is stifled.  Where am I going with this, you might be asking.  Over the past four days I have driven over 1000 miles for work (no joke, 1000 miles, in a car, by myself, in four days).  I had a lot of time alone with my thoughts.  Most of those thoughts were negative, angry, self-deprecating.  I’d decided that I was not going to blog again until I was in a better frame of mind because no one likes to read depressing, negative blather.  I mean, I certainly don’t.  I was feeling hopeless.

Then I had an idea.  If I didn’t have anything positive to say, then I would start writing posts about things that happened or that I saw during the day but write them as short stories.  Maybe fictionalize them a bit.  Maybe they will remain individual stories.  Maybe they will morph into an actual novel.  And maybe, just maybe, I’ll find inspiration while taking a hike through the forest.