writing – Page 9 – Karen Creamer Author, Coach, Speaker

Does this NaNoWriMo make my butt look fat?

November 5, 2014November 6, 2014 by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, books, NaNoWriMo, writing

As a NaNoWriMo participant, I keep odd ours. Maybe you can relate? I am writing when and where I find time, or beg, borrow or steal time. This requires a larger expenditure of energy, ergo, I need to eat more often. Quick sugar foods are often at hand and fill the bill.

So far this month I have been hitting the peanut M+M’s pretty hard. Also Sweet Chili Pistachio nuts have my name all over them (hmmmm….maybe I should rephrase that….). Did I mention that I also have a jar of dark chocolate Hershey’s Kisses on my desk (dark chocolate equals health-ier, right?)?

Well, since I don’t want to be saying, “HEL-lo, five shiny new pounds,” on December 1 (after all, who has time to weigh themselves in November during NaNoWriMo?), I am rethinking my go-to snacks.

I shall keep you posted.

What do you guys eat to keep you going while you’re writing?
NB: A nod must be given here to the book by Peter Walsh that inspired the title of this blog post. 🙂

NaNoWriMo 2014

November 3, 2014November 3, 2014 by Karen, posted in books, writing

So it’s November, and you (may) know what that means: time to write a novel. This year my novel is having an identity crisis. I’ve renamed it three times since I began November 1. Yes, that’s three new titles in three days. This is the first time I’ve had this issue with my project.

I am taking it as a good sign.

This could be the year that I publish what I write for NaNoWriMo! Maybe the principle of ‘third time’s the charm’ could apply here!

The first title was: The Bobs. The second title was: A Tale of Two Sisters. The third title, the title du jour, is: One Brave Thing.

I am also reminded of the book, Do One Thing Different by Bill O’Hanlon, which I highly recommend. Anyway, I have that covered already for this year (reference above title changes) but I am thinking of designing a cover for my book to make it more real as I am writing it.

It must be said that I am not an artist, but I am a writer, so it follows that I am creative.

I am interested to see what I come up with.

Leisure time: top 10 activities

October 30, 2014 by Karen, posted in books, local fun, movies, NaNoWriMo, the beach, writing, yoga

I have the next few days off and am thinking of fun ways to spend it:

Go bowling
Go to the movies: I want to see St Vincent, The Judge, and that Steve Carell movie about the terrible, very bad day.
Get up early and go to yoga
Go see the ocean!
Check out the Craft Show at the JHS
Work on my plan for NaNoWriMo beginning 11/1
Attend a memoir writing class (if I can just get in my registration under the wire….)
Start my next knitting project
Read one of the hundred or so books I have in piles waiting for me
Go to the Health and Wellness Expo in Portland

Of course, I may just lay on the couch and watch The Pioneer Woman on the Food Network.

Becoming less literate

September 21, 2014 by Karen, posted in writing

I have been noticing lately that my writing style has changed. It’s much more…staccato. Where did all the pronouns go? I often omit them now. I am noticing that sometimes I leave the punctuation off of the last sentence I write in an email-especially if it’s a period. I left capital letters in the dust years ago (hello, e e cummings? i so get you now).

My email communications are morphing more toward telegram than letter. I use lots of dashes now. Oh, and the exclamation points!!!!!! And don’t even get me started on the emoticons!!!!! 🙂

I suppose it’s because of presumed lack-lack of time to write-lack of the recipient’s time to read.

I blame texting.

A Writing Challenge

February 22, 2014 by Karen, posted in writing

A writing challenge on the Buddha Doodles Facebook page caught my eye: the #WriteYourHeartOpen Challenge. Basically, you get your writing materials out the night before and have them ready to go when you wake up in the morning. Then, when you get up, you can go grab your coffee/tea/cocoa, then come back to your writing, before you do anything else. There are just three steps:

Write for five minutes. About anything. Just write. After five minutes, stop.
Write down three things for which you are grateful.
Set an intention for the day.

That’s my memory of the steps, anyway. If you check out the Buddha Doodles Facebook page, scroll down to the February 1, 2014 post for the original post to read the instructions as written by the author. For Day One, participants were invited to post and tag pictures of their writing space on the Buddha Doodles Facebook page, which I did.

I thought the challenge was for the entire month of February, but after I reread the rules for this blog post, I see something about seven days…what? I have been doing it all month and will continue, since that was my original commitment.

What I have noticed:

My writing thrives when I have structure, self-imposed, or otherwise. A definite schedule works for me.
If writing is the first thing I do every day, then I do it. There is no time to let other pursuits take precedence.
You can write a lot more than you think you can in only five minutes a day. A. Lot. More.

One bonus: The intention that I set for my day every day is powerful. Whatever I write down, I do it. . . which reminds me of a book I read years ago: Write it Down, Make it Happen by Henriette Klausen.

Yes. What she said.

NaNoWriMo, here I come!

November 1, 2013 by Karen, posted in NaNoWriMo, no fear, writing

So I think it’s true that the more you write, the more you write. Why?

Because it’s almost 11PM and I’ve been up since 5AM and I am sitting here writing this.
Because it’s Day 1 of National Novel Writing Month and I have been sitting here on this hard, hard chair writing for the past three hours to reach my 2000 word per day goal (which I did meet! I did! Yay me!) and still I am sitting here writing this.
Because even after I did meet my goal, I was motivated by my fellow writers on the NaNo Maine Facebook page to write just a little bit more and still I am sitting here writing this.

Maybe Homeopaths are on to something…like really does attract like.

😉

Writer’s lull

July 30, 2012 by Karen, posted in education, family, Midlife Crisis, writing

For weeks and weeks, I was the whirling dervish of writing:

I had a few blogs going for which I posted several times a week.
I was writing 2000 words a day for my book.
I was writing book reviews for several websites.
I was writing restaurant reviews and food articles for an online magazine.
I was writing millions of words in emails to my friends and coworkers daily.

…and so on; you get the idea. I was wily and whimsical in my writing.

Then, an issue came up in relation to the education of one of my children and suddenly I found that much of my writing time was taken up with writing emails, letters, and synopses of events and phone conversations for many different involved parties, almost every day, including weekends, almost to the exclusion of all else. I was diligent and dutiful in my writing.

Now there is a lull in the education issue. I have reluctantly come to realize that there is now a lull in my writing activities as well. I have learned this: the more I write, the more I write. Unfortunately, the converse is also true: the less I write, the less I write. This writer’s lull is different from writer’s block. It’s not that I have no ideas about what to write. I have plenty of ideas; I just can’t seem to get them out of my head and onto the page.

I was distressed. When I told a friend about this, she suggested that this is actually a period of renewal, a time to foster new ideas and thoughts that will fuel my next writing phase. She further suggested that this period of writing not-so-much is part of the process, and therefore is necessary and beneficial.

I’ve decided to go with it, on the chance that it might be true.

It feels true.

Pen pals

March 14, 2012 by Karen, posted in friends, Midlife Crisis, no fear, Turning 50, writing

I have a new pen pal! It happened like this: I got an email from a reader of one of my myriad online writings. She took a leap of faith and asked if I wanted to correspond, either via email, traditional mail, or both. She shared information about her life, her family, her country.

She is from Germany by way of Italy, and it is through my love of All Things Italian that we came in contact with each other. I was hesitant at first to say too much; after all, you don’t get to be a midlife woman in New England without hearing all sorts of stories of scammers presenting themselves as Something Other Than Who They Are.

But then a funny thing happened: I decided to take a leap of faith too. As part of my year of turning 50, I had previously decided that,when presented with an idea that appeals to me, to just go with it. No whim will be turned away. So I answered her email.

I have had other writing relationships over the years. When I was in middle school, there was a pen pal in Korea (not sure how I became “pals” with her; probably a school project). When my friend Sheila moved many states away from me (sob!) about 22 years ago, we started writing to ease the pain. We continued, too; even though I stubbornly resisted, we eventually switched to email from legal pads and are still writing to each other nearly every day, all these years later.

Come to think of it, I have many “email pals” among my friends now. We ‘talk’ through texting, emailing, and IM’ing. Since all of us are so busy, it allows me to include my friends in my daily life, friends whom I might otherwise go long stretches of time without seeing.

Hel-lo? In the 22 years since Sheila left, we’ve seen each other in person twice, I think (forgive me if that’s wrong, Sheila, but you know how the midlife memory works–it doesn’t!).

How do you maintain friendships?

Time to write

February 14, 2012 by Karen, posted in books, my one word, writing

For the first time in as long as I can remember, I don’t have any books checked out from the library. None. Zero. Usually have a large pile or two of library books stacked next to the bed and/or couch, waiting to be read.

The time constraints imposed by the library (read: due dates) helped keep the pile(s) manageable. No matter how busy I am, I always seem to find time to read.

Writing? That’s trickier. If you write on a laptop, as I (now) do, it can be very difficult. Laptops are supposed to be portable, but if you have one with a crappy battery life (like, an hour?) and if you have trouble seeing the screen outside in the daylight like I do, you end up having packed up your laptop for nothing, because you can’t write a damn word under those conditions.

Here’s the funny thing though: Now that I have no library books staring me down, I suddenly do have time to write. Sure, I still have piles of my own as yet unread books, but they don’t have to be finished by any particular date.

They can wait.

Note to self: having a deadline, it turns out, can be very helpful.

Go figure.

Expensive (disposable?) electronics

January 24, 2012 by Karen, posted in quest for the best, Work from Home, writing

I had a Compaq Presario Desktop computer for more than 15 years, and it never stopped working. Well, except for that one time, when it caught a virus, but it recovered and never failed me again. Its only shortcoming? It was (a phenomenon with which so many of us who are aging are intimately familiar) getting slow, or slower, to be more precise (you know, in comparison to the younger–I mean newer–models).

In our household we’ve had 4 laptops (all different brands) live and die in under 4 years. What’s up with that?? Two of them have been repaired (for a few hundred dollars total) but the trust is now gone, you know what I mean? Like when your car doesn’t start for the first time…it’s hard to rely on it fully after that. You’re always on edge, waiting for it to let you down again.

Do any of you writers and bloggers out there have a computer (either a desktop or a laptop) that: