Tag: My One Word 2012

My one word, 2016 preview

by Karen, posted in friends, my one word, The write words at the write time, writing

January is coming fast. The past several years I have participated in the My One Word project. In a  nutshell, you choose breathea word that ‘will inspire you all year long’. It’s sort of like making New Year’s Resolutions, but simpler. And harder.

It’s not too early to start thinking about your word. You may already know what it is! A word may have sprung to mind the moment you read the phrase. If so, great. Go with it. Trust your gut. Otherwise, you can start paying attention. A word may present itself to you over and over, and then you will know. Yes. Yes, that’s my one word.

This year, my one word is Brave. I have to say that I have pushed myself to try things and go places that I never would have if I wasn’t being brave. Looking back, I am truly amazed! And there are still more than two months left to 2015!

You can keep your one word private, or you can tell some friends. I will say that having told my friend Sheila this year, she reminded me (when I needed to be reminded-you know, whenever I was trying to talk myself out of doing that hard thing? She reminded me I was Being Brave this year, so I had to do it).

If you choose a popular word, like BREATHE (this is NOT going to be my word for 2016; just an example!), you can find plenty of things to keep around you to remind you after January comes and goes that you are doing this.

Need some help choosing your word? Go to pick your word.

My one word 2015

by Karen, posted in movies, my one word, NaNoWriMo2014, no fear, quest for the best, The write words at the write time, writing

IMG_0743I have written about My One Word (MOW) in the past. The premise is this: you pick just one word to inspire you all year long.

If you are a writer, the appeal of only writing ONE WORD in a writing session is seductive.

It is, however, also deceiving. It’s harder to choose just one word to write down than you might think. There’s actually an entire website devoted to this topic, with a section devoted to just choosing your word.

When you can only choose one, you want it to be the best word ever.

The contenders this year for me are, in no particular order:

Write Meditate Breathe Focus Declutter

I thought I had a good list from which to choose when I made the mistake of visiting the MOW website’s ‘Pick your word’ section and another word, a bright and shiny new and different word, popped out at me: BRAVE. This word, this BRAVE word, showed me that I had unconsciously been thinking that MOW must be a verb. Every word that I thought of was a verb.

But Brave? Brave can be an adjective or a verb! Or even a noun! And Brave is a big, important word. There’s an entire Disney Movie about that word! I have written other blog posts that contain that word!

Oh, I just thought of yet another (verb) word:  Decide.

I think maybe I just did. 🙂

What do you think about choosing One Word versus making New Year’s Resolutions?
What would YOW (Your One Word) be?

If you are BRAVE, please comment below with your choice!

 

Pajama Day!

by Karen, posted in books, health, Midlife Crisis, movies, my one word, no fear

I recently read a magazine article about Valerie Bertinelli  ( Woman’s Day, I think; she was on the cover, if that helps) in which she describes a day that she spent in bed. Her husband was away travelling (I think), and of course she’s had an empty nest now for years, so there weren’t too many arrangements for her to make in advance. She gets a stack of magazines, books she has been wanting to read, movies she’s been wanting to see…then takes to her bed, staying in her jammies (duh) and even brings any meals right there to the bed for consumption.
I immediately started wondering how the heck to arrange a Pajama Day for me.

I found a day in March that looks promising.

“Now,  if there were only closer opportunity for a mental health–I mean, pajama–day!” Then a funny thing happened…I got sick.

My stack of magazines is already assembled. My stack of books is already next to the bed (and the couch, and my desk) and currently I have not one, but two books that I am actively reading and loving. My movie list is already compiled on Netflix (not to mention my DVR queue that at this point is looking longer than my life). In fact, a movie that I have been dying to see for weeks had just (finally! finally!) arrived from Netflix and was there waiting for me.

I never get sick. Here was my perfect opportunity to take a pajama day, handed to me on a silver platter, and what did I do?

I went to work.

Stupid.

It’s hard to not be afraid to just focus on oneself.

Oh, I did use the fact that I was sick as a ‘get out of (going to the) gym free’ card. Just sayin’…

Finishing my (first) book

by Karen, posted in books, education, my one word, no fear, writing

My One Word (aka New Year’s Resolution) for 2011 was to finish my book.

Instead, I wrote a second one.

What’s that about? Well, what I told myself at the time was that I was following a strategy that Stephen King advocated in On Writing, where you put your “finished” manuscript into a drawer and basically ignore it for a few months.

My gut tells me that it was really about procrastination.

So there I was, in December of 2011, and I had only reached Chapter 2 (of 50+) chapters in my book since I’ve been editing the typos and such out of it. My husband, once again, took pity on me. He suggested that I get a room with a view to work on my edits, freer from housework, mail, mommy (and wife!) roles, and other distractions, since this had been so effective (I’m ashamed to admit this) almost one year ago, when I was getting the printed out copy ready to become a proof copy.

And so I did. I got about one-third of the way through the proof that day. I set a goal to reach page 100, which I accomplished. I estimate the book is a little over 300 pages at this point (since I neglected to add them in the proof copy, I don’t know for sure!) so that’s not a bad day’s work.

The good news is that the manuscript for the second book is much less of a mess than was/is the first. I figured out that I needed to put in the chapter breaks and blank pages as I go, because they do not magically appear at the end when you finish, as I had previously thought. I also know how to paginate the darn thing, which I didn’t know for manuscript #1.

Maybe it was really all part of the writing process?

Here’s hopin’.