Tag motivation

The importance of real pants

caravanofcomposition 2 Comments

Social media memories are a blessing and a curse. I love looking back on times when my boys were cute and cuddly and my face had fewer wrinkles. But during a pandemic, it is heart wrenching to wake up, click memories, and be instantly reminded that we can’t do those things right now.

Three years ago today, the weather was beautiful, and we had a packed Saturday. I hung out with my family at our town’s annual Oktoberfest, where the boys participated (and ROCKED) a keg rolling contest, and then headed to our local library to celebrate the launch of my friend’s latest middle grade novel. We ate snacks from a communal table, sat next to each other, and hugged.

Hugged.

Now, I’m not much of a hugger to begin with, but I miss that human connection. I miss Wednesday night writing sessions at Wegmans and Friday afternoon gab sessions at Spot. I miss launch parties. My book releases next week, and I don’t have anything planned to help launch it into the world. Many of my writer friends continue to self-quarantine, and the thought of doing something virtual does not exactly thrill me. While I appreciate their ability to connect us safely, I am pretty burnt out on web-based social gatherings.

Our local writing group held its first meeting of the season (virtually of course) earlier this week. It was a craft session, which is always fun, 80’s themed – double bonus points, but I just couldn’t get into it. I missed the collective energy normally felt in a room full of writers. I stared at the blank page as it mocked me.

I had to finish a project in March/April due to a deadline, but since then? I’ve written once. And only because one of my Pennwriters friends organized a virtual write-in, and I felt like I had to write something in order to not be a complete fraud. I pulled out an old project, added about a page and a half, and that was it. The sum total of my writing output for the past six months.

There are projects. There are ideas. There is also a very tired mama who doesn’t wear real pants anymore. Who thinks, do my stories even matter? With so much hate and hurt in the world, what could I possibly add to the narrative? I keep waiting for the proverbial lightbulb to go off in my head. For the magical idea that will send my fingers tap-tapping again. Do you know how many blog posts I’ve drafted in my head these past several months? The sleepless nights I spent thinking, “This is what I have to say,” then instead of getting out of bed and writing it down, allowed my nay-saying brain to dismiss it all?

(A LOT.)

The world needs stories, especially now. Cheerful ones, sad ones, true ones, and fictional ones. We need to step away from social media, from the negative energy of everyone spewing their anger and ideals and also from the memories of all the things we can’t enjoy right now. I’m confident those days will return – the days of launch parties and writing/gab sessions. In the meantime, we need to keep doing the best we can, no matter how low the bar. This morning I put on real pants. They are uncomfortable. But I needed to send a message to my brain that this is serious. Life must move forward. Fingers must hit keys in order for words to get onto the page. They don’t do anyone any good swimming around in my brain like lost tourists.

So here we are. Doing that thing where the journey starts with a single step. Mask up and join me.

Jumping in

caravanofcomposition 6 Comments

I have officially reached the state of paralysis. You may have noticed there hasn’t been a blog entry since July. If you’ve seen me in person lately and asked what I’ve been working on, I weakly respond with a shoulder shrug and desperate rush to change the subject. There are a number of reasons for this. Life has a nasty tendency to get in the way of writing — family, job, house, volunteering — they all demand my time, my brain power, my creative energy. Also, guilt plays a pretty huge part of the equation. How do I strike a balance where I’m giving 100% of myself to personal responsibilities and still have something left for my creative pursuits?

Answer: I don’t. Instead of giving 100%, which is totally impossible, I give a lower percentage to each item at a decreasing rate dependent upon immediate need. Some examples: one of my co-workers recently retired at the cusp of our busiest season, which translated into extra hours at work. The kids started school, and I had to make sure they had what they needed. While I managed to keep everyone fed and in clean underwear, the layer of dirt in the house increased exponentially, and my laptop lay buried under piles of scout materials. No writing happened. For weeks.

But it’s not just that. There have been small chunks of time where I could have planted my butt in the chair and typed away at something… anything… but I didn’t. Why? you ask. I’ll tell you why. Doubt. Doubt is an ugly, ugly monster who has firmly planted himself in my brain. What if I never write anything worthwhile ever again? What if all my ideas are stupid? Does anyone really give a crap about what I have to say?

I have an amazing, supportive group of writing friends, who nod sympathetically as I describe the fears that stomp on my confidence like grapes in a barrel. They’ve all been there. They all balance life with writing, quietly shoving it into the corner when things get hectic, patiently searching for moments where they can settle into the salve that soothes us: the words falling onto the page from our fingertips, the release of ideas crowded in our brain. I need to write. When I don’t, I become this moody, unruly creature no one wants to be around.

Too many responsibilities, not enough time, pressure to perform — these are all things that can be overcome. But the longer I stand on the edge of the diving board, the harder it gets to jump. Every morning I promise to change, and every evening I go to bed without writing any words. Talk, talk, talk. No action. How do we push ourselves over the edge and into the pool?

I’ve been meaning to start a food blog, and a few weeks ago, it finally launched. It’s not much — a picture of what we ate for dinner with a short blurb about the daily challenges of being a plant eater in a house full of meat eaters. Follow along if you’d like. But it has helped get me out of my writing funk a little, and now that we are finally settling into the school year, hopefully I’ll get back into a writing routine. Which will at least address the first half of my difficulties.

As for the doubt, well, it may never fully go away. We all, at some point, feel inadequate about our skills and worry we aren’t accomplishing all we set out to accomplish. And you know what? That’s okay. We’re human. And as artists, we will never create the perfect thing everyone loves. So I guess my advice (to myself and anyone else who struggles with doubt) is this: Make time for the things that bring you happiness because they will make you a better person in the end. Focus on the process rather than the product, and stop worrying about what other people think. Easier said than done, I know, but if I can jump back into the water, so can you.

If at first you don’t succeed, set the bar lower

caravanofcomposition 4 Comments

Okay, that sounds a bit pessimistic. But hear me out. If you wanted to become a high jumper, you wouldn’t set the bar at a height impossible to clear, right? You’d start low and get really good at each level before moving up to the next. If you are learning a new skill, you’d start with the basics and then work yourself up to the more complicated elements. And maybe you’d fail a few times, or a few million times before you could do the thing you set out to do, and maybe that feeling of failure lights a fire under you and forces you to try harder.

But you know what else is super motivating? Success.

I have participated in Camp NaNoWriMo three times. It’s an online contest of sorts that grew out of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel Writing Month, where to win you must write 50k words in a month. Camp is more laid back (as camp should be). You set your own goals and have a cabin of fellow writers to cheer you on and make references to roasting marshmallows and making s’mores. It’s fun. It’s encouraging. The first time I participated, I agreed to join a large cabin – some writers I knew, some I didn’t. There were virtual crafts, write-ins, and shout outs on Twitter. At the time I was revising my second novel and thought two hours a day seemed a reasonable goal. But I started the month off on a road trip, clocked zero hours of revisions for the first few days, and rapidly became discouraged. There’s this great STATS feature, which tells you your daily progress, how much you should do to reach your goal, and if you continue at your current rate you will finish…. in 2020.

The second time around I was working on a new novel, and decided 10k was reasonable. It wasn’t. Our cabin had only three members, and we had some amazing discussions about plotting and staying confident in your work. I made more time to write, but the words weren’t flowing and again I felt discouraged by the ever distant finish rate.

Third time’s the charm. Between April and July, I worked to unclog the stuff that wasn’t working and brought the first chapter to my critique group. They loved it and told me to keep going.

Let me stop here for a second. I know some of my blog followers aren’t writers and they are probably skimming through this post because blah, blah, blah she’s carrying on about writing again. Look. Your words can make a difference in someone’s life: your child, spouse, co-worker, employee, friend. A stranger. Be kind. Encourage someone today. It might be the very thing they need to keep moving forward.

When I decided to join Camp NaNoWriMo this past month, I thought about my goal. I didn’t want it to be too high and get discouraged. July was busy, people. BUSY. But I didn’t want it to be too low and seem insignificant. I thought about what my friend Kate had said a while ago, about setting micro-goals. If I could sit down every day and write something, 100 words, I would keep moving forward on the story. I set my overall goal for the month at 4k, and did my best to write at least 100 words every day. I didn’t write every day (I missed about half), but when I did, it was always more than 100 words. Sometimes it was only a few more, sometimes a lot more.

So I set the bar lower, but at a reasonable, attainable height. And it worked. The project is at 12k and I’m excited to keep writing.

And it feels pretty good to see this:

camp win

Are you trying to accomplish something and feeling overwhelmed? Can you break it up into smaller, more manageable micro-goals? Find a way to earn success. To celebrate the mini victories and stay motivated.

You got this.

Dog days

caravanofcomposition 2 Comments

Happy summer everyone!!

Back in my teaching days, the end of June meant two months of sleeping in, but now that I work over the summer, it’s more about the shifting of routines. Instead of heading off to school, the boys head off to camp. We still have to get up, make lunches, and get out the door on time. No lounging about. Weeknights and weekends are packed with soccer, soccer, soccer. Summer often feels more relentless than the – dare I say it – lazy days of winter. Nevertheless, I look forward to spending time outdoors. Enjoying a good book at the pool, taking a long evening bike ride with the family, watching the sun rise and set at our cottage. There are things to be thankful for with each passing season. And it presents another opportunity to reflect and set new goals.

Our local writers/illustrators group, BNCWI (click on the super cute Buffalo on my homepage for more info), met earlier this week to discuss some of our favorite lines from kidlit. It was a great way to get some new reading suggestions and talk about what grabs a reader’s attention. After the sharing, someone asked what everyone’s writings goals were for the summer. One of my friends mentioned setting what she called “micro-goals” or small, manageable goals that keep you motivated and feeling successful. For example, saying you’ll write 1k a day may be too daunting, but 500 words? Or even 250? An hour in the chair is not always feasible, but what about 10 minutes? Is your house a disaster due to weeks of backpack regurgitation? (It can’t just be my house, please tell me other people experience the onslaught of desk/locker clean outs!) Tackle one pile a day. My friend pointed out that sometimes the micro-goals are what you need to get moving, and once you start you accomplish even more than you set out to do – and who doesn’t like busting through the bottom of a to-do list?

If you write, and need a little extra encouragement and cheer leading to keep you motivated, check out the monthly writing challenges on Twitter. It is a wonderfully supportive community. Or try Camp NaNoWriMo, which runs next month. Even though my July looks like this:Capture

I plan to participate. I know what you’re thinking, if she has enough time to make a visual representation of her life as a soccer/scout mom, she has enough time to write. And I do. We all have time for what fuels us, if we make it a priority.

Before starting this post, I looked back on my Spring intentions to reflect on how things have gone these past few months. I’ve been writing regularly, perhaps not as much in my WIP as I’d hoped, but I published a weekly blog post and recently began to work on a new verse novel. I’m also super proud of the fact that I got my website up and running despite the small meltdowns along the way. My health is good, and I continue to look for moments where I can simply be present. One of the things I look most forward to in late June is the arrival of sugar snap peas in our farm share box. It sounds silly, but they are so incredibly delicious that I usually eat half the bag on the drive home. Add in my favorite hummus and a good book, and you have the makings of a perfect moment.

So what’s on my to-do list for summer?

  • Read
  • Write
  • Laugh
  • Eat from the Earth
  • Soak up the sun

How about you?