Category: Writing

Writing

Finding the Time to Write

Mary C

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I have read several books on writing and attempted the twelve week program outlined in The Artist’s Way over the summer (I didn’t make it past week three). The advice I most often see is to write in the morning and to commit to a block of time to do so. This sounds great to me but then I remember I have a job. A job where I’m in the office at 7 a.m. so right there I throw out the idea of morning writing. I so want a true writer’s life where I can devote specific hours to it every day.

For a time I tried getting up at 5 a.m. so I could at least put in an hour in the morning but that lasted as long as the end of summer when darkness and cooler weather enticed me to remain under the covers until 6 only giving myself enough time to quickly shower and dress before leaving the house at 6:40. When I was morning writing, some days it would be hard to break away from the rhythm after an hour.

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Writing

Daily Blogging Challenge

Mary C

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In my internet wanderings yesterday, I happened across a post at See Jane Write about a daily blogging challenge for the month of November. I thought to myself, wow, people really blog daily, and then, no way could I do that. However, the thought kept niggling away at my brain until I was saying heck yeah! Challenge accepted!

I was hoping to have some guidance on how to make this a reality and luckily, upon further review, the post had some suggestions on how to successfully #bloglikecrazy for an entire month. Typically I don’t put a ton of thought into the topics I write about. That’s pretty clear, right, since I don’t blog very often and then they are about random things. My posts tend to grow out of a particular situation presently occurring in my life.

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Writing

Writing about …

Mary C

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Week one of the writing class was interesting.  The class is from six to eight every Thursday evening and at 5:45 last week, instead of traveling the 20-minute route to my class, I was running the kiddo back to school for some homework he forgot and absolutely needed. I’m trying to let him experience natural consequences when these things happen but he was near tears and I acted with my heart instead of my head knowing it was going to make me late. My GPS calculated my arrival at the Arts Center to be 6:20 but I didn’t realize how impossible the parking was going to be and circled the neighborhood several times which added another 20 minutes to the trip. Honestly, I nearly decided to bail and go home but something wouldn’t let me take the easy way out.

I ambled into the classroom a good forty-five minutes late (this was week one for me and week two for everyone else) and I interrupted an animated discussion which felt a bit awkward. Everything stopped and the instructor said “you must be Mary”, to which I blurted out quick apologies. I scanned the room for a chair, and after I sat, realized why it was empty. The arm clattered to the floor when I went to pull it in. I briefly wished I had just gone home.

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Writing

Why I Write

Mary C

Pen Writer Girl Book Writing Notebook Notes

Writing has fallen by the wayside. Again. What is a wayside? The edge of a road. My thoughts are a bit disjointed if you can’t tell. It’s been a few weeks since I’ve put pen to paper in my journal and I’m starting to feel the weight of it. All the thoughts and ideas that keep churning around without a place to put them.

I start another writing class tonight which is actually week two and I’ve been catching up on the material I missed last week. One of them was an essay by Terry Tempest Williams titled “Why I Write“. It’s a beautiful piece and it covers just about every reason to write and I nodded along as I read. “I write to quell the pain. I write to uncover. I write to meet my ghosts.” Yes, yes, yes. And also this: “I write because it is dangerous, a bloody risk, like love, to form the words, to say the words, to touch the source, to be touched, to reveal how vulnerable we are, how transient.”

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Writing

Stand up and write!

Mary C

I am now a proud user of something called a CubeCorner 36 which is basically a standing desk.  When I googled it to link for the link, I was brought to a picture of a desk a bit different than the one I have in that it is white and a little wider. I love things that are white because they make me think of clean design and it’s a bit more of a contrast to my black monitors. I’m a bit jealous I didn’t get a white one, but since the office paid, I will not complain.

 

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My desk is like this but black

 

How does the desk work? It goes up and down by holding a couple of handles on either side and then you pull up and forward to go up and push away and down to go down. Going up is pretty easy but putting it back down was a bit of struggle at first. I’m either getting better at it or the joints in the desk are loosening up.

I didn’t know if I should jump right into standing so I did a little reading on the topic before commencing this activity. A few sources recommended starting slow, maybe 20-30 minutes at a time which I’ve been gradually increasing over time and now stand about 2 hours a day in 30-minute increments.  I think the goal is to spend about 3 to 4 hours standing each day which is about half of the workday.

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Writing

Writing and Domestic Life

Mary C

It has been my goal for a very long time to write a book. I let the idea go for many years but over the last several months, with mid-life firmly fading in the rearview mirror, I can no longer hold off the voice in the back of my mind: write, Mary, write (channeling Forrest Gump here). I am trying to squeeze in the time to write and so I’ve signed up for an online writing course to hold me accountable and to get help in starting the process.

Today I am working on week 2 of the class where we write the first chapter (or any chapter or scene). Week 1 we completed a story summary which had sort of come to me a couple of months ago and I’ve been trying to suss out the characters over the past few weeks which helped me dive into this week’s assignment. Who they are. Where they’ve been. Where they’re going.  It’s been an interesting process!

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Writing

Writer’s (un)block

Mary C

I have been away from the blog for a bit (the post I published yesterday was written a few month’s ago). It has not been an auspicious beginning for me with the new site! I was stumped as to why I had such a block against writing and so instead of ringing my hands over it any longer, I made it as simple as possible and started putting pen to paper for the last two months. It may have done the trick!

Pen Writer Girl Book Writing Notebook Notes
I wrote about anything and everything that popped into my brain. What happened during the day. How I slept. What I ate. Who I saw. It was painfully dry! Then something started happening and I began to wake up early (5:00/5:30) eager to open the notebook and let my thoughts pour out.

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Writing

I am not writing

Mary C

Ha! I thought I was back. Not yet, apparently.

I can’t understand how the yen to write on a nearly daily basis has dried up so suddenly. Do I have nothing new to say? Have I said everything I need to? Maybe I’m living life differently now so that I have less stuff bottled up to throw out on the page. I’m pretty sure none of these are true.

Perhaps by naming this blog I Am Writing, I have jinxed myself into not doing it. So therefore I must force the issue until it happens more naturally. It brings to mind a quote I borrow from Louis L’Amour:

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So today, I am turning on the faucet and what comes out just might be a little rusty.

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Writing

Hello again!

Mary C

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A couple of months ago I said goodbye to my former blog Mary 2.0. In it, I chronicled my first year of sobriety and shared so much about myself and my recovery that I thought it was time for a fresh start to reflect the newish me. It was a year of ups, downs and most importantly, a year of learning who I was after pealing back the many layers of me I’d tucked away. The break has been really good. In between, life has been going on and on as it tends to do and I’m ready to say hello to writing again.

I have been so conflicted of late. Everywhere you turn there is news about our new President and I’m considering another Facebook hiatus because of it. People cannot agree to disagree and some of the threads on my feed can turn downright ugly. You see I worked for a newspaper and many of my online friends are from that era. They take the criticism of the media very personally and I don’t blame them. The people I worked with are by and far some of the most honest, truth-seeking people I have ever met. But this is NOT a post about politics.

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