Returning to the Habit

Yes, this writing challenge is difficult. What words do you put down and which do you discard? 

You might have noticed that I haven’t written here for a few days. Oh, I had a really good reason, getting married takes some energy and focus away from sitting at a keyboard, I'm sure you'd agree. But we all have reasons, don’t we?

Long hours at work, a child who won’t sleep, sore back or wrists? How about, no ideas?

I can’t fill in the gaps of the days that I missed. I thought about doing that for a few minutes, I would just "catch up", I  said to myself. How would anyone know? I could fake it. But I believe that I need to acknowledge just how difficult this mini – NaNoWriMo truly is.

Festivities have ended at my home. Along with the quiet of departing family members is the realization of how quickly I can fall out of a habit. And I need to own that before I can sit down to do this again. Is it no wonder that only 18% of NaNoWriMo participants complete it?

Let’s face it, writing is my creative enjoyment. But to feel creative I also need to know that my other responsibilities are taken care of first. I like a tidy home, I like to make my lunch for the next day, I like to have some time to catch up with my husband. He’s the one that made the dinner which gives me the leftovers for my next work-day lunch. He deserves any creative success I might achieve.

Here’s another excuse, I want the perfect photo that works with my written word. Which sends me off on a tangent to find it in my “many” folders of memories. Although I am quick to preach that “done is better than perfect”(Sheryl Sandberg, Lean In), I struggle with utilizing this gem when I sit to write each day.

So here I am climbing back on the writing train, with a deeper understanding of the commitment required and why a writer deserves every single cent of the sale of their articles/books. This writing is dang hard work.

Most writers start a new project right after they're done, that new idea usually came to them while they were working on something else. It is endless. It’s a wonder that more writers don’t throw their computers/injure themselves with their pens.

And so the circle goes, finish it, put it aside, it might not be perfect but it’s out of your head and on the page. 

Note to self: there are no perfect photos or (Tweet This) in this post. Yet the world continued to revolve. For today, it is done. Tomorrow, do it again, maybe better.

What We Want to Know

Now when I see an interesting person, because I do have a file of photographs which fall into this category, I like to question. What brought this person to this place in time, what choices did they make or not make, who were they before this moment, and looking down the road who are they likely to be? As if we ever truly know.

Because the tall, pretty high school Queen of the Carnival, didn’t get her dream life. She settled in front of the TV and spends her day watching reality shows. She knows that her best has already happened. And that young man, the one that was written off because he couldn’t understand basic math, picked up a book about Space and decided that he needed to learn more.

Someone got a tattoo and hangs out at bars and someone else decided to put their lessons to use and become a police officer.

Sometimes the changes we make are not as obvious, usually they are just inside. Subtle, for years, each day one little change. And then the day arrives when someone is humble and confident. Another is obnoxious and brassy.

What has happened that someone is sleeping on a park bench, with all their earthly possessions, and their dog? Does this dog have a secret life like the ones in the 2015 Giller Prize winner, Fifteen Dogs? Why do they feed this dog when they haven’t had a sandwich since Friday?

Why do some people have beautiful houses and yards, but sad lives within the walls? Why are large pieces of art important but they don’t know where their son is sleeping tonight?

People, all of us flawed. 

There are times when I wish I didn’t see so much, didn’t have access to magazines on mindfulness and books on psychology. Didn’t have subscriptions that arrived steadily in my Outlook, and dinner appointments booked weeks in advance. Because who would I be?

But then, what would it be like to be sleeping on a park bench and to wake up to the smell of coffee and a fresh donut that someone had left for you. Quietly. Out of reach of your dog. 

How do we feel an other's feelings, without sleeping on their park bench too? (Tweet This)

Who were these characters before I met them? (Tweet This)

The Things We Think We Know

Now, when you are looking around for characters, ones you know or those in your periphery, there is never a shortage of whom to draw from. We get used to the people around us. We overlook their oddities, their frailties, we don’t see their weirdness as time goes on.

The Things We Think We  Know - what do you see?

Have you ever introduced a friend to someone you have worked with for years.Then your friend says, “wow, what a big nose” or “good grief, is she ever insecure”. And you are surprised, shocked even maybe. Because you have gotten used to seeing this person as a flattened version of whom they are. You’ve picked which parts of them you need to or can deal with and ignored the rest. 


But someone new is meeting them for the first time, they are picking up an energy and an "introduction" that you’ve forgotten. So let your unconnected people meet and then listen for their reactions. It is such a good way to create a character whom you have forgotten. And I will leave it up to you, if you make them a hero or kill them off at the end of the page.

The man I am marrying next week was telling me about a time in his life about 30 years ago when the boys spent a great deal of time trying to meet girls. It seems they played a game of “guess what she does for a living”. An appalling excuse to scrutinize women, I say! But again valuable if you need to write a new character.

Now, of course, we’ve all made up stories of the people who cross our path. We love to think that the prim, pearl-wearing- necklace-person has a stripper pole in her bedroom, or that the big, mean-looking football player is counting down the days until the Christmas movies start on the women’s network.

We make up stories, all the time. We need them to make sense of our world. We need them to understand others, even if the things we think we know are totally wrong.  

We make up stories to make sense of our world. (Tweet This)

The things we think we know can be totally wrong, and they still make sense to us. (Tweet This)