Tag: Writing

Writing

Catching up

Mary C

I wanted a coffee in the worst way this morning. Part of my healthier eating routine is to forgo coffee due to the cream and sugar I use but since I had a bowl of ice cream last night, I’m pretty sure I’m not doing so well with it. So I thought I’d just cheat a little and have that coffee but someone has my back because we are nearly out of cream and the expiration date on it is tomorrow. I bought this cream before I gave up coffee (around Christmas) so I’m not about to drink something that’s about to go off. Tea it is.

And so every time I sit down to write on my day off, I’m greeted by this face. You can imagine this presents a bit of a problem. He is puzzled why I’m not going to play with him all day instead of doing boring human things.

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All I had to do was give him a treat and he happily goes to the kitchen to gnaw away on it. If only life was so simple for all of us.

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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

Oops

Mary C

Do you know that moment that happens so fast. Like the blink of an eye? That’s the moment I realized I shut the door behind me. Locked. Keys inside. I was rushing around at the last minute as I needed to be somewhere soon. I was savoring a book I’d bought for Liam and I couldn’t put it down. It’s called The Giver. Jonas was turning twelve and he had just had the Stirrings. What was going to happen next? I looked at the clock and knew I’d have to rush to make it in time.

What is it they say when you make plans that dissolve in an instant?

plans

 

Usually it’s God’s way of telling you to slow down, right? Or maybe this time He was telling me – you’re going to slow. You want to lay around reading a book when you should be getting ready for your meeting? I’m going to lock you out of your house in the dead of winter while you can think that one over. Ha.

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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

 

A-goal-without-a-plan-is-just-a-wish

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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Life

Happy Blogversary to Me!

Mary C

I had a nice reminder from WordPress that today is my anniversary with them. Two years ago, in the mess of my life in early recovery from alcoholism, I decided to blog about my experience. I wrote mostly for myself but if I helped anyone else along the way, I would be happy a million times over.  It was a very tough year that included internal struggles, family struggles and the death of my mom just weeks before her 75th birthday.

At the end of 2016, I decided I wanted to create a fresh new start for the new year and locked up the old blog and started anew with iamwriting.blog. It was as if I was locking away my recovery (and the death of my mom) to say that part of my life is done, now onward and upward. But it turns out that is an integral part of who I am now and I thought it fitting to unlock my old blog in case anyone can use it to glean hope after putting away the alcohol. It is a truly worthwhile venture.

I was ashamed for so long about being an alcoholic. Like many others, I denied it and tried different ways to control it on my own and kept silent about it just for that reason and it wasn’t until these past two years of recovery that I’m becoming more comfortable in my own skin. While I don’t shout my disease and recovery from the rooftops, I feel blessed to have been on this path and for the people who have come into my life because of it. I have a new peace today that I never thought possible.  I used to be a daily drinker, many times to the point of blackout and even though I said over and over I wasn’t going to drink that day, I would, in the end, and I thought this was just how it was going to be.  I’m so grateful it’s not like that anymore.

So in honor of my blogversary, I decided to change the settings on my old blog from private to public and maybe someone who is ready to find their way to recovery will stumble upon it and find some comfort knowing others have traveled that same path before them.

Now onward to 2018.

MC

Writing

Read to write

Mary C

my readingThis tweet from Lauren Groff (who I’ve never read but may have to change that next year) resonated with me and where I am at this stage. I haven’t been writing and that’s ok. I used to feel guilty or embarrassed or something that I professed to want to be a writer and yet not write and then I made myself write every day whether it be in my journal, on a random scrap of paper or in the drafts section of WordPress, never to see the light of day. I have over 20 drafts in my WordPress folder if anyone is counting.

Back in October, I was so excited to have Fridays free to write when I went to a four day work week. Guess what? That time began to fill with other things mainly related to parenting and home life. I finished up my Thursday night writing class a couple weeks ago having missed half of the eight sessions because even when I try, I find it impossible to put myself first for fear I’ll disappoint someone else.

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Writing

I will write today

Mary C

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A cup of coffee and a blank page. Must be Friday morning. Again, I didn’t post yesterday for the daily blog challenge for the month of November. Wednesday night’s post was written in bed at 10:00 p.m. after traveling home from Chicago and then catching up with the family.  Yesterday was catching up on work, a meeting that ran late and then rushing to get to the annual mother child dinner for Liam’s school. I was pretty exhausted and didn’t feel like socializing and being in a noisy environment with only one hearing aid didn’t help. The other one broke on Sunday afternoon just as I was to head to the conference.

We got through the night and on the ride home all I could think about was going directly to bed. As soon as we got home (it was after 9:30 at this point), Liam wanted to watch TV because there wasn’t school in the morning. I knew if I let him stay up while I went to bed, he’d be up very, very late so I argued with him for about 15 minutes before I finally used a little bribery to get him to bed. Again it was 10:00 before I got into bed and a blog post wasn’t going to happen. I couldn’t even muster up fifteen minutes of reading time and was asleep when my head hit the pillow.

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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.

Continue reading “Stand up and write!” →