One Writer's Guide to Getting Stuff Done

As my friend, you'll be happy, I'm sure, to know that I am completely up to date on my e-mail. (And my paper mail, since you're interested.) I've also scrolled back several days in my Facebook feed, so if your kid(s) did anything cute since Independence Day, I have liked,  grinned, "awww-ed" and/ or chortled appropriately. Did you post a picture of yourself at the shore-- any shore? Or up in the cool, pine-topped mountains? I have jealously regarded your happy circumstances, hit the like button, hiked the speed on the ceiling fan, and cursed this time that I am consigned to wander in the Phoenix desert metro area. 

I've also binge-read every blog I was ever vaguely interested in, applied for two jobs, cleaned the kitchen, swept the floor, and made a master shopping list for a future week's worth of meals planned to cook on some future Sunday, probably when I am also supposed to be writing.

Because this is the key to high productivity folks:  you can do everything and anything you've never gotten around to doing, if only you have a project that you are supposed to finish. Today. 

Just to avoid writing, an activity I am ostensibly supposed to enjoy enough to consider it a "passion," I have gone so far as to page back through several weeks of to-do lists to see if there was anything that "fell between the cracks." Believe me, I found plenty. 

Though it's usually writing that is the catalyst for a whirlwind of unnecessary activities, I've also successfully put off lots of other creative projects until the very last minute, simply by doing a bunch of other things instead. I am a pro at this, after all these years, so I've also been able to avoid other unpleasant tasks, like balancing my checking account (it's been so long, do people even do that any more?), filling out required forms, doing my taxes... You name it, if it had to be completed by a certain time, I've avoided it.

Today, I was seconds away from cleaning the bathrooms, already clean by our household standards, when I realized that, dammit,  I needed to stop procrastinating and sit down at the computer.  Then I promptly re-checked my e-mail, my bank balance, and Facebook and, just for good measure,  played eight rip-roaring games of computer solitaire, followed by countless rounds of that weirdly addictive gem smashing game in which my fantasy coin count now measures in the mid seven figures.

I finally opened the document files that held my writing. Then rechecked e-mail. Scrolled through what I wrote the last time I could glue my ass to the chair and my attention to my work at the same time. Then someone needed a snack. One of my children, actually, not just me, but some fuel wouldn't hurt, right? 

Back in the chair. Back to the file. E-mail. Word document. Here we go.  I typed two whole sentences, but suddenly needed to check a fact on the internet-- and you know what a rabbit hole that is. Somehow, I found myself on decorating sites-- how to stunningly upgrade your smallish rental apartment has, like, a million possible links. For some reason I found myself thinking I should clean the bathrooms again. 

But I remained steadfast. You are supposed to be writing, I told myself. Pretty sternly, but not so as to lower my self-esteem or anything. Geez.  Then I'd never sit down and write again.

Then I decided to write this post.  The question before me now: is this writing, or procrastinating?  Or some odd fusion: "procrasti-writing?" 

I think I need to get myself a snack while I think about that. I should get the kids something to munch on too. My real job is being a mom, after all.

And then I might clean the bathrooms, but I will definitely check my e-mail again first. 

Hey Guys... I'm Getting the Blog Back Together!

Phineas and Ferb image from here

You may have forgotten I had a blog. 
I may have forgotten I had a blog.  
The last post was back in November of 2014, when I was smack  in the middle of a blog-a-day run. Who remembers now what stopped me? I think it was sudden family illness, but that certainly doesn't account for the last six months when nary a word has been written.

At first, I didn't miss it. Didn't have that nagging need to sit down and write. Then, by the time I did, work was busy, and then it was holiday time and then, New Year and Spring and... well, you get the picture. Lots of busy, but no valid reason for not writing.  

I think I was kind of worn out. 

Quote from this site

I still am, and there is still lots of stuff that legitimately claims my attention. For instance, we moved two weeks ago-- just from one apartment in our complex to another, but still, everything went into boxes and bags, and much of it still has to be unboxed and unbagged.  I'm not even sure I still want some of the stuff, so it's time to declutter too, and pare down by asking myself if each object around me brings me joy. ("Goodbye scale!" is all I can say...)  Man, that all sounds like a lot of work. Who knew it was so hard to be a minimalist?

Meanwhile, there has been work, and more family medical stuff and worries about money and time and getting older. At my husband's request, I've stopped coloring my hair to cover gray, and at the girls' request, I'm letting it grow. It's feeling a bit out of control.  I'm beginning to think that I need my short, dark pixie cut to feel sharper again. 

Quote from here

Actually, I'm beginning to worry that I may never feel sharper again... So it's time to start writing. I'm going to try to go back to finding the good fortune, or at least the humor, in every day life. Here on the blog and, with any luck, on other projects and in other circumstances as well. 

So I'm getting the blog back together...who's with me? 

It's Not All About Me This Time

I seem to have a lot of trouble blogging lately.  That makes it sound like maybe I've been writing something else, though, so in the spirit of full disclosure, I think I should say, I've had a lot of trouble writing lately.  Like, at all.  Even my shopping lists have been ineffective, gamely started on our kitchen whiteboard, sometimes transferred to a sticky note or the back of a coupon, only to be consigned to the bottomless chasm that is the bottom of any bag I carry anywhere.  I find them later, always after returning from the store, only to have them taunt me with the essential items that are, without fail, missing from the shopping bags.  Cheese! Napkins! Coffee! (And if I got coffee, I forgot cream. Oy!)  To-do lists have been equally futile. I noticed, looking back over the past month or so, that tasks carried over from day to day, sometimes disappearing for a day or two only to top the list again and spend another week undone.  Kind of demoralizing.  It's been a slump, but I'm determined to come out of it.  School is in full swing, and the little post office is getting busier, so I'm going to try to let the momentum carry me along. 

I'm at the post office now, as I have been every day this week, and I have to say, I'm over it.  Over writer's block. Over the post office, over working, over still being pretty seriously poor, work notwithstanding.  

I am not the poster girl for the power of a positive attitude.  

As I weeded out my email inbox in an effort to continue to evade writing this blog or anything else, I got to a note I had gotten in late May from a woman named Heather von St James in response to the blog.  She is an amazing survivor of mesothelioma cancer.  Mesothelioma strikes people who have been exposed to asbestos over long periods of time in their work environments. Heather was apparently exposed through secondary contact with asbestos via her dad, who worked construction when she was a kid. Heather got the diagnosis eight years ago, just three months after the birth of her daughter.  Mesothelioma patients are usually given about 15 months to live.  She has beaten incredible odds and survived, after major surgery to remove her left lung.  Take a minute.  Wow, right?

The  Mesothelioma Cancer Alliance has a very informative website that tells all about this rare, yet completely preventable disease. Heather had asked me to help her meet her July goal of educating 300 people who had never heard of mesothelioma.  Well, clearly I missed that window of opportunity, but Heather was gracious about it, and I am hoping we can help her cause at least a little bit.  Her very powerful story is available on this website.  Watch it, and please share it so that Heather can get the word out about mesothelioma, and more importantly, about hope.  The video shows her baking with her lovely daughter and offers commentary from her and her husband about what it was like to get such a dire diagnosis and how they managed to defeat the odds. She says in her video that she has been "accused of wearing rose-colored glasses," all her life.  Well, luckily for her and her family, and all of us, she's still here so we can see how great they look on her.  

And if that isn't enough to grant us some perspective, I ran across this the other morning, first in the Huff Post, then in facebook feeds of several friends and blogs that I follow.  This is the final post from a mom named Charlotte who blogged through her battle with cancer.  She prepared it knowing that it would appear after she died. 

Charlotte reminds us all to embrace life and live it as fully as we can.  I'm pretty sure that doesn't include cranking about work and writer's block and feeling poor.  I'm pretty sure it doesn't include any self-pity at all.  I often start writing about something that happened to someone else and turn it so that we can all see how it relates to me.  I'm glad that today, I managed to start out with myself and take it up a level to talk about other people, Heather, and Charlotte, who can teach us all something we need to know.  


Picture of typewriter from this page. Picture of Heather von St. James from the mesothelioma site. 

How to Become a Professional Writer

Now that I am what I hesitantly call "a writer," I have had to think about the fact that I am not just doing this for fun, and that doing something else is somehow cheating on writing. And I'm not even talking about overcoming my well-known tendency to procrastinate. I'm talking about real stuff like vacuuming, cooking, and making the girls' beds.  I have begun to look under every literary rock to see how the other writers do it, especially the successful ones (meaning the ones I've heard of) so I've  been reading a book edited by Mason Currey, called Daily Rituals: How Artists Work, which is exactly what it sounds like, a compilation of the daily habits of working artists, composers and writers.  Now, I'm a sucker for this kind of thing, and I am always ready to read something like the How I Write blog featured on the Books section of the Daily Beast. I'm also quite the stalker of the Brain Pickings site, because they often feature writers discussing the creative process and how they have harnessed it to suit their work. 



See, Jane Austen took breaks... from Jane Austen info page

The problem with reading about all of these routines is that none of them say anything really helpful, like "...and then, dressed and coiffed by ten a.m.,  Jane Austen arranged the day with the household staff before she went out and gathered flowers from the conservatory garden. When she came back into the manor house, her writing had neatly completed itself and was piled cleverly in chapters on her escritoire."  Or "Sartre and De Beauvoir sat sharing cafe au lait and croissants, discussing the existence of existentialism, while the typewriter clacked merrily away in a darkened  corner of their pied-a-terre. In the late afternoon, fortified by more pastries, they argued playfully and drank some wine while their writing checked itself for grammatical errors and philosophical inconsistencies."  

Lots of cafe time for Simone & Jean Paul here

Perhaps you sense the nature of what I am really hoping to find: some magical, mystical incantation to perform over my lap top so that I could get my housework done, read to the girls, then sit and read a novel over a scone and a latte, while my writing writes itself.  Apparently, there is no such thing.  Let's all hang our heads in disappointment for a moment, shall we, because then I have to take a deep breath and get to work.  My research about writers of the well known variety confirms this truly unfortunate state of affairs:  To work as a writer, you must actually work as a writer.  You have to get your butt in the chair and write.  Like, all the time. 

But here's something that may surprise you, if you've been to my house: when the house is a mess, I don't feel like writing. (If you know me, I know you have to be thinking "she must never feel like writing!")  More to the point, I don't feel like I should be writing. I feel like I should be cleaning. But I know that cleaning doesn't make me a writer, because we've just learned, apparently, only writing makes me a writer.

In fact, to a person, every single creative professional to offer advice about things such as writing and creating and making art, insists that one must actually show up, work hard and then work hard some more if the art is going to happen.  But first, even the productive writers have to get some things out of the way, like washing and grooming.  Many of them even mention getting kids off to school. So Currey's book and all of those other providers of details about how to get your butt in the chair, so to speak, have been helpful to me. This is because, in every case, the writers reveal that they do a couple of things, like brushing their teeth and getting caffeinated and even getting the kids to school, but it is all in the service of getting to their work.  No one mentioned housework.  No one mentioned cooking.  They give themselves permission to ignore those daily tasks and get to work.  Isabelle Allende put it well:

The notion that I do my work here, now, like this, even when I do not feel like it, and especially when I do not feel like it, is very important. Because lots and lots of people are creative when they feel like it, but you are only going to become a professional if you do it when you don’t feel like it. And that emotional waiver is why this is your work and not your hobby.

And even though I don't really need to cite anyone else, I have to mention that Cheryl Strayed, writing as Sugar, the sensible dispenser of sensibility at The Rumpus, gave this simple advice at the end of a long answer to a young writer who wanted help getting out of her own way so she could write:  "Write like a motherf@#!er." Now, despite years as an enthusiastic participant and proponent of both parts of that colorful compound epithet, I've never really embraced the word for personal use. But here, it makes sense to me.  When I think about what that means for me, I know it's about sitting down and writing, even when I feel I should be doing something else.  So that's what I'm going to try to do.  For those of you who come to my house in the next few months, don't mind the motherf@#!ing mess-- take it as a sign that I am taking myself seriously as a writer.