Random Friday
Yesterday, I stopped for a hot chocolate and a few minutes of quiet work in between one meeting and another. By the time I sat down and opened my computer, I realized something very odd was going on. For the first time I can remember, I was the one and only person in the coffee shop with a laptop. This was not some computer-free zone in which I was breaking the rules. On the contrary. I do some of my best writing in locations of this very same cafe (Blenz), where they serve my favourite dark hot chocolate (skim, extra hot, if you please). But on this particular afternoon, the place was fairly busy, with about 2/3 of the tables and all the comfy chairs taken, and not one other person was working on a computer or even a smart phone. Every single one of them was doing one of four things: reading actual paper books or magazines; sipping a beverage and staring into space; jotting things in a paper notebook; or talking to actual human beings. The first and last of those were the most popular activities. I felt kind of guilty sitting there with my computer. But I think what struck me most about it was that it was so noticeable. Has it really become so unusual for us to sit and talk to people in a coffee shop without benefit of sharing what we’re looking at on Youtube? To have a conversation that doesn’t involve stopping to check the notifications on our phones? To go out in public and read books that smell deliciously of paper and ink? Probably not. If I look around any coffee shop I’m in, I see people doing all of those things. But it was very strange to see no technology in evidence at all. In other news, I’ve seen some great links in the last week or so. Most of them, naturally, I forgot to take note of to share them with you, but here are a few, at least: http://wellfesto.com/2013/11/19/10-things-i-want-my-daughter-to-know-about-working-out/ My daughter figured out really young the connection between exercise and feeling good. As we navigate the treacherous teenage years, I hope she can hold onto the idea of strong and healthy being the most important things. This post sums that up nicely. If you’re a writer, you’ll probably relate to several of these: http://blog.pshares.org/index.php/14-ways-to-tick-off-a-writer/ Are you attempting to make writing a priority during the craziness that is December for most of us? Why not commit to Nephele Tempest’s December writing challenge? http://nepheletempest.wordpress.com/2013/11/25/december-writing-challenge/ Share...
Fleeting Hours
Does anyone else ever wish they could put the need for sleep and food aside sometimes and stretch one day out for as long as it took to finish a big job? I am not at all averse to hard work. But every once in awhile, I AM daunted by just how long big jobs take and by the need to stop in the middle of them to do necessary things like eating and sleeping and grocery shopping and and and… I often look at my circa-1983 ensuite, and think “I could rip that out right now.” And if I did, I’d happily put in the work to re-do it. If I could do it in one stretch, even if that meant magically postponing the need to sleep or eat for a couple of weeks to make one long day, at the end of which I’d have a shiny new bathroom, I’d dive right in. What puts me off is the thought of NOT being able to do it all at once, of having to go to bed at night in the midst of renovation mess for days or weeks at a time. And I know full well that whatever time I think it will take is probably half or 2/3 of what the reality will be. The same is true with writing. Unlike the still-untouched bathroom renovation, I DO put in the work for that, even though it means living in a mess of unfinished chapters and half-written scenes for weeks and months (or maybe even years) to get to The End. But some days, the impossibility of writing a book in one sitting frustrates me. No matter how hard I work, it isn’t possible. On my best ever writing days, the ones where the words seem to pour directly from my subconscious into my computer, I’m lucky to reach 3000 words. And those days are rare. A very successful writing day for me is more like 1500 words. And that’s fine. Except that some days, I’d like to sit at my computer and simply stay there until the whole book was written. Instead, the hours fly by, swift and fleeting, and dinnertime or bedtime rolls around again, and I have to leave the mess to pick up the next day. That there will never be enough hours in the day to do all the the things I want to do is a given in this world of ours, but sometimes, I wish for a little magic… Share...
On Barbara Park
You know, I hesitated to write this post today, because it’s been five days since Barbara Park died, making it “old news” in internet terms, even if it is the first chance I’ve had to sit and write anything about it. How ridiculous is it that that even crossed my mind? Sometimes the effect the internet has on the way we think about things doesn’t make a whole lot of sense. As if five days means anything at all to the people most feeling her loss. We were all very sad at our house to hear that Barbara Park had died. For a long stretch when my daughter was little, Junie B Jones was our nightly companion when we read together at bedtime. We laughed with her and talked about her and made special trips to the bookstore to buy the next one in the series. Junie B., First Grader: Aloha-ha-ha was my daughter’s first experience, though certainly not her last, of having to wait, not always patiently, for the release of a longed-for book. My girl has long since outgrown Junie B. But for a couple of years, these were our go-to books, favourites we read together and she read on her own over and over again. Junie B. gave my often serious, then very shy little girl time to explore her silly side and gave us lots of bedtime laughter. Barbara Park reportedly said, “Personally, I happen to think that a book is of extraordinary value if it gives the reader nothing more than a smile or two. In fact, I happen to think that’s huge.” As a writer, a reader, and a mother, I couldn’t agree more. As Jim C. Hines reminded me this year at SiWC, stories matter. Barbara Park, your stories mattered in our house. Thank you for that. We’re very sorry that you’re gone. Share...
The Games We Play
A couple of years ago, I really wanted to finish the manuscript I was working on. I’d hit the part of the year when my day job threatens to take over every waking moment, and between that and family responsibilities, I was finding it almost impossible to make time for words. As it always is when the writing gets dropped, it was a matter of not making that work as much of a priority as I should have. But however I manage to tumble into the non-writing state, inertia is a terrible thing. When I get out of the habit of writing nearly every day for any reason, getting back into it is a frightening and difficult prospect. So, like most writers I know, I play games with myself to trick me into slipping back into the writing groove. With the right mind games, I can dodge the reluctance, sneak around the block, and find ways to make writing time my top working-hours priority once again. On that particular occasion, into that awful state of inertia and frustration came salvation in the form of the whip-cracking, tights-wearing, excuse-rejecting author kc dyer. Her solution then, custom-made to fit my life at the time but easily adaptable for anyone, is the very best writing motivation tool I have ever encountered for fitting writing into a busy life. Have you ever played the dice game Yahtzee? It’s a game of chance and of choice, really. You roll the dice, and when you see what lands, you choose which part of your score card to mark. As the game progresses, the goal is to fill every box on the score sheet. The good thing about Yahtzee is that even if you have a crappy roll, there’s somewhere on the score sheet to fit it in and get some credit for it. kc applied the same principle to creating a writing schedule for me. Gone was the idea that I had to write a daunting, specific number of words every day. Instead, for each month between when she made the schedule and my self-imposed deadline for finishing the draft, she’d offered a grid of choices. There were 500 word days, 750 word days, 1000 word days, 1500 word days, and even days off, fewer in less busy months, more in months when an extra day off would mean the difference between sanity and insanity, success and failure. My instructions were clear: print the schedule and put it up where I could see it from my computer. Every day, mark off with a highlighter whatever writing I managed to get done that day, or use up one of my precious days off. This deceptively simple tool made all the difference. With the chart staring at me from behind my screen, it was almost impossible not to convince myself that I could manage at least 500 words so I could colour in a box that day and save days off for when I really needed them. Sometimes, I’d push 500 to 750 or 1000 to save the 500 for a worse writing day, so it would always be there for the “Come on; I can do a measley 500 words” conversation with myself. It didn’t hurt that my daughter, then eleven, jumped on the schedule bandwagon, becoming the daily word police, pushing me to stick to it. Her efforts, as well as my knowledge that she was watching me and would know if I put the work in to accomplishing my dreams or didn’t bother (a particularly motivating truth for parents, I think), made it impossible for me to ignore the schedule hanging there. I finished the draft. And now, with this year’s conference behind me and the need to once again find a better balance that favours writing over other tasks, I’ve printed out a new schedule for the coming months. Here’s a peek at what it looks like in its spot of honour on the bulletin board right behind my computer. It works for me; maybe it’ll work for you, too. Try it. Share...
Welcome to the new site!
Hello, and welcome to my new digs. You’ll notice a few changes from my old site, most notably that I’m now blogging under my pen name, Kathy Kenzie. For those of you who know me from SiWC, the Compuserve forum, Twitter, or other parts of my life, this will continue to be my personal blog. I’m simply bringing everything under one roof here with the introduction of Kathy Kenzie. If you’re a new reader, welcome! If you’ve followed me here from kathychung.com, thank you! All the older content here has been imported from there, so you’re already all caught up by reading this post. I’ll leave the old site active for re-directing for now, but all new posts will be here. I’ll try to be a little more regular about posting, but I know better than to promise. If good intentions count for anything, though, I have them in spades. More soon… Share...
Recent Comments