Tag: writing

NaNoWriMo 2015 is underway

by Karen, posted in NaNoWriMo, writing

I have been participating in NaNoWriMo  since 2010 and have always finished. I signed up again this year, fully Printconfident that I would finish it, since I always have.  After all, I had a foolproof formula. I know how many words I have to write each day to make sure that I have some breathing room and finish on time. Every other year, every day, I sat down and wrote my 2000 words. Every year.  I usually finish a day ahead of time

Well, this year is different. This year, I am way behind.

What the whaaaaat?

I know. I don’t know what’s up. Of course there are things going on, things to deal with, but still.

I am making an all out effort to get caught up this weekend. If I don’t reach my word count number that I have set as the line drawn in the sand, I might be done for.

Fingers crossed.

Following the clues

by Karen, posted in Angels, education, Metaphysical healing

1991I had a dream two nights ago, the night of the full moon, come to think of it.

I dreamed about numbers.

So, have you ever dreamed about numbers? This is a new phenomenon for me. The sequence I dreamed came through loud and clear:

1991

I didn’t see or hear the numbers so much as I just thought them. Loudly. In the dream.

I know, right?

Of course, once I awoke I realized that 1991 is the year my son was born, but this didn’t seem to resonate as to what the message of the dream might be.

After puzzling over it, it dawned on me to do what every red-blooded American teenager does when faced with a question they don’t know the answer to.

I googled it.

Google showed me this:

Angel Numbers-Joanne Sacred Scribes

Sacred Scribes? Hel-lo? Has a writer ever coined a more beautiful title? I want to be a Sacred Scribe! I was smitten before I even started reading the article!

Anyway, it turns out that 1991 is actually a meaningful sequence in general, and very meaningful to me in particular.

I am learning so much by just following the clues to where they lead!!

Tranquilize your (winter) writing

by Karen, posted in Life in the cube, NaNoWriMo, NaNoWriMo2014, Work from Home, writing

IMG_9996We need to take care of ourselves while we are spending endless hours writing at our computers. Just because the NaNoWriMo has officially ended, if you’re like me, you have much writing still to do to get your project ready to see the light of day. We need to do things to keep our thoughts tranquil (OMG! My shoulder is killing me! I don’t have enough time! I’m frikkin’ starving!!) and our anxieties (OMG! I’ll never finish! This is garbage! I have to start over again!!)  at bay.

Here are some ideas for tranquilizing winter writing:

  1. 1. Get an swesome flannel sweater vest at Old Navy  that is as comforting as a BLANKIE.  🙂
  2. 2. Have you seen those microwaveable body blankets? Grampa’s Garden sells them. They are pricey but worth it. Zap for 7 minutes in the microwave and cover your desk chair with it (or slip it under you or over you if you are writing on the couch). You will LOVE it.
  3. 3. Get a Himalayan Salt Lamp. They create a nice atmosphere and ambiance when you are writing, reportedly purify the air around you (to counteract all the curse words you may be saying or writing!) and make a handy little night light if you need nap. 🙂

Every bit of heat and comfort helps, don’t you think? Does anyone have something to add to my list?

 

 

Mental health break

by Karen, posted in (it's all about the) food, family, italian, Marriage, NaNoWriMo, restaurants, writing

IMG_0012I took a two-day break from Nano writing and went away overnight to celebrate my husband’s birthday (and, you know, to take a break from sitting! At the computer! Writing! OMG! I haven’t been able to feel two of the fingers on my left hand for a week!).  We had supper at Nolita,  a new-ish Italian restaurant in York that we like.

I felt a little bad that he hadn’t had a cake on his birthday and gotten to hear the sweet strains of the “Happy Birthday to You” song wafting toward his ears on his day, but so be it. We wanted to have the cake with the entire family, and that couldn’t happen until the following day.

When we arrived at the restaurant, my husband had to run back to the car to get his reading glasses (he is so not into my rendition of “This is what’s on the menu” that he’d rather run back out into the 27 degree cold dark night that to listen to it).

That’s when the waitress came over and I mentioned it was my husband’s birthday. She said, “Does he like tiramisu?  We give a free tiramisu for someone’s birthday.”

Now, Bill does not like tiramisu, but oh my God! I love it!  But, it was his birthday after all, so I asked if there were other dessert options and she said they have gelato. As (my) luck would have it, I’m pretty sure the only thing he dislikes more than tiramisu is gelato.

“Yes, he does like tiramisu! Bring that!” I said, conscience clear.

What I hadn’t realized (and in fairness to me, I was halfway through my Italia Margarita at the time) was that said tiramisu would be accompanied by, um, fanfare. And I’m pretty sure that if there is one thing Bill dislikes more than gelato and tiramisu, it’s fanfare. In our 26 or more (we can’t agree on this) years together, he has never, ever seen a cake coming toward him with a gaggle of servers singing the birthday song to him.

And yet, I lived to tell the tale, so it’s all good.

Also, that tiramisu rocked!

 

 

 

Yoga for writers

by Karen, posted in health, NaNoWriMo, writing, yoga

IMG_9998

Are you dying of pain from a week of practically nonstop NaNo typing? I woke up Saturday morning, let the chickens out, fed them, and carried a bag to my car and suddenly was in severe pain in my left shoulder.

Really? Really? I thought, THIS BITES!

It’s like adding insult to injury, right? I mean, shoot, we managed to type our frikkin’ brains out to try to meet our personal word counts and now we are crippled.

As always, we have only ourselves to blame! But we also can help ourselves.

Check this out:

Seated yoga positions that you can do at your desk will help!!**

Here are a couple that you can try at home now (please note disclaimer below!):

  1. Sit or stand. Bring your right arm across your body with the palm facing you and hold it with by bringing your left arm up to make a “T” (see picture above). Hold as long as you want to get a good stretch through your shoulder. Repeat with the left arm, bringing it across your body with the palm facing you and hold it by bringing your right arm up.
  2. Sit in a chair. Place your right palm under the right side of your butt, facing down and pointing to the left. then sit on it. Let your head drop to the left, but DO NOT FORCE IT, just enough to get a good stretch. Repeat on the other side: place left palm under the left side of your butt, facing down and pointing to the right then sit on it. Let your head drop to the right, but again, DO NOT FORCE IT.

I learned these stretches from my friend, yoga teacher, and fellow writer Kristen. Check out her blog here.

**DISCLAIMER:  If you have any existing injuries, illness, or weaknesses in muscles or joints, please discuss these exercises with your doctor to see if they are appropriate for you before trying them.

 

 

NaNoWriMo 2014

by Karen, posted in books, writing

IMG_9738So 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.

Becoming less literate

by Karen, posted in writing

computerI 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

by Karen, posted in writing

Day 1 writeyourheartopenA 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:

  1. Write for five minutes. About anything. Just write. After five minutes, stop.
  2. Write down three things for which you are grateful.
  3. 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:

  1. My writing thrives when I have structure, self-imposed, or otherwise. A definite schedule works for me.
  2. If writing is the first thing I do every day, then I do it. There is no time to let other pursuits take precedence.
  3. 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.

Writer’s lull

by Karen, posted in education, family, Midlife Crisis, writing

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

  1. I had a few blogs going for which I posted several times a week.
  2. I was writing 2000 words a day for my book.
  3. I was writing book reviews for several websites.
  4. I was writing restaurant reviews and food articles for an online magazine.
  5. 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

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?