Tag: goals

Writing

30 drafts!

Mary C

Egad! Thirty drafts in my folder. I haven’t posted here in nearly two weeks but I have so many uncompleted thoughts in my drafts. I don’t know what the issue is but I’m profusely embarrassed or at least somewhat disheartened that I’ve put writing on the back burner again.

In early January, I spent about 20 minutes on my resolutions. I wrote them in a brand new fancy notebook with a brand new fancy pen and then haven’t looked at them again. I know somewhere in there is a promise to write more. Especially on Fridays when I’m off from work. I did manage to do this two weeks ago and got started on a new novel that came rushing out of me faster than I could type it. I spent a couple of hours just hammering out the words. I reread them and thought this could really go somewhere and then the next day I thought it was complete shite! That was also the day I locked myself out of the house.

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Life

Teach me to run

Mary C

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I have been toying with the idea of becoming a runner in 2018. It’s a lofty goal because for the last 50 years I have absolutely abhorred the idea of running. The first memory I have of running dates back to about fifth-grade gym class when our teacher asked what everyone’s dream destination was. Do you know what’s coming? Well, we didn’t. Everyone yelled Florida, home of sunshine and Mickey Mouse. What came out of his mouth next was horrifying and chilling: OK, you’re going to run there. What?!

His brilliant idea was to find out how many miles to your dream destination (nearly 1400) and then over the course of the next several weeks (years!) we would run there mile by mile in a loop that encircled the playground and sports field next to our school. It’s amazing how many of us decided our dream destination was Hague, NY a nine-mile distance that seemed more reasonable, if not as enticing.

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Writing

Best Laid Plans

Mary C

How does this sound? You’ve cleaned up the morning dishes, cleaned up your writing room (it is the first room in the house as you come in the door and gets loaded up with coats, mittens, boots, nerf guns, you name it), the dishwasher is humming away, the dryer is spinning in the next room. You’ve got a large mug of hot tea by your side, journal and pen in hand, ready to write down your writing goals for 2018. The house is quiet, surrounded in fresh white snow and the family is at work and school and the dog is planted at your feet. Cozy, huh. Continue reading “Best Laid Plans” →

books

Hopes and Goals

Mary C

 

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Over and over we are told to write down our goals. Make them specific. Make them actionable. Make them accountable. Usually, I’m tempted to go overboard and decide to overhaul everything in my life from diet to exercise to a promise to write every day. I also throw in things like being more patient, showing more compassion to others and being more organized. While these are all good intentions, I think this year I need to be a little more realistic. While I do want to cut out sugar, I know it’s going to be baby steps. While I want to get to the gym more, I’m not going to make a rigid commitment to go every day. Same with writing.

One thing I’m going to commit to is to give other people positive feedback as much as possible. I follow a lot of authors on Twitter and have come to realize that they like to hear when you enjoy their work (makes sense!). I am an avid user of Goodreads to track my reading but have done very little by way of reviewing the books as I read them. I vow to change that this year and already have a couple of reviews under my belt. I realize this is only January 3rd so I’m going to ask a question that has always rattled around in my reading brain – do audiobooks count toward your total book count for the year?

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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 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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