In an effort to re-establish my blog habit, I’m going to write about a book I’m finishing called The Power of Habit by Charles Duhigg. You’ve probably seen it on the shelf, it’s bright yellow with four circles on the cover. I can’t say enough how positively this book has influenced me. Not only is it fascinating, it has life-changing, but practical daily advice. Add this to your kindle library ASAP.
Back on the Wagon… Again
My wagon of choice.
End-of-school-year activities, finishing work, and vacation have all made for a lovely summer thus far. They have also completely derailed my writing schedule. Every time this happens I feel something close to fear at starting back. I don’t think it really is fear, I think it is laziness; but at the same time I’m reluctant to get back to serious work. Maybe it’s that fear of completion I hear people talking about. As long as I have something in progress it can’t be bad, right? Only when I finish it and people hate it can it be considered bad. But it’s not like I’m sculpting in marble. Whatever I create I can change. So what am I so afraid of?
How to Find Focus
We live in a society that expects us to be experts in many things. Most jobs require a base of knowledge in addition to computer skills. It is a standard that even young children know how to read and do at least simple math tasks. Women may not need to sew, but they are still expected to cook, and not just cook, but cook well and elaborately as we see over and over again on TV. In this niche society it is not out of the ordinary for someone to know A LOT about some small detail of pop culture. In a way we are expected to be the ultimate Renaissance people who are educated in many subjects and maybe even masters in more than one.
This is in direct conflict with what we see everyday: people who are really good at one thing. Those people are focusing on their art or talent and honing it to perfection. That isn’t to say they aren’t good at anything else, but that one thing is their focus. How do you manage to pick the one thing you want to be good at long enough to get good at it? If you are interested in many things are you doomed to mediocrity in all of them? Or do you follow my mom’s advice, which was pick the first thing and do that, then pick the next. She used that as career advice as well.
Are the other random issues in our lives keeping us from excelling? I was thinking about this today when I realized that if I stopped doing a lot of extraneous things I would have a lot of extra time. Now some of those things I think I could truly drop, but others relieve stress or create joy in my life and those are things I need. At the same time I think I never learned how to have real, complete focus on one thing. So here’s my new plan to create focus:
Not only will I dedicate a period of time (like my hour a day writing), but I will dedicate a space. No matter how small, I think I need to go to the same physical space each day in order to create a sense of “being at work” for that period of time.
I need a series of mini goals, like steps, in order to give myself a feeling of accomplishment and maintain motivation. I think in the past my goals have been too big and daunting.
I’m also going to allow myself time off without guilt. I don’t mean huge blocks of time, but I know that I often spend my goof off time thinking that I should be doing something productive. That just ruins the goof off time and I’m still not getting anything done!
The Importance of Flaws
My children will never have chicken pox scars. I must be out of it because my daughter was a toddler before it dawned on me that she would never go through the rite of passage that was chicken pox when I was a child. Vaccinations had made that an old-fashioned problem like polio. I grew up with a prominent chicken pox scar on the tip of my nose that traveled up my nose as I grew and somehow found a spot next to another scar on my forehead as an adult. They don’t really bother me and I have plenty of better things to be self-conscious about. It got me thinking about flaws in general, and how important they are for real (and fictional) people.
Though they won’t have chicken pox scars my kids already have some character-building scars. They are minor, but my daughter has a light scar between her eyes and my son has consistently banged-up knees. I don’t see a problem with these kind of minor imperfections and I think it is part of your personal history, kind of like a roadmap of life. It’s something I have to remember about writing fictional characters. Although they may do incredibly good or bad things, it is often the little quirks that make people endearing and give them personality. An example is Sherlock Holmes playing the violin while thinking. The amateur detective was a drug-addicted genius, but the violin playing showed him to also be vulnerable and capable of producing art, not just science.
That kind of character trait needs to be born organically, though. I can’t just make a list of awesome weird traits and randomly assign them to my principal players. I need to think of how people come about the odd hings they do.
Filed under April 2011
Is Work Getting in the Way of Your Life?
I have this pesky thing I do during the week that really messes up the rest of my week. I try not to complain about it because I know there are a lot of people who are looking for work, but sometimes my job feels like it is in my way! Other times it can be very rewarding, but this week it was definitely in my way. I had to go away overnight for business my first day back on the writing wagon. Normally that is no big deal and staying over saves me a lot of driving time, but this time it was just annoying and I lost focus because of it.
I will now digress a moment to complain heartily about the poor food at the new Marriott “bistro”. Courtyard Marriott is apparently trying a new thing where they have a restaurant in the lobby. It is only open for breakfast and dinner and it has a small Starbucks menu as well. The place is decorated in that faux trendy style that I see in a lot of hotels. They are trying to be cool, but somehow it looks cheap. Anyway, I did not fancy sitting by myself in the trendy lobby of the Camarillo Marriott so I ordered my food “to go” back to my room. I ordered a tuna sandwich and a cup of broccoli soup with a bottle of water. Not only did that cost my $22 with tip, but it took almost a half hour to prepare (I was the only customer) and was virtually tasteless. I should have walked across the street and bought a burrito.
This ruined my motivation for the evening and I watched trash TV, which I am good about avoiding at home, but there’s something about free HBO that makes you want to watch. I case you were wondering, Sex and the City 2 WAS WORSE than everyone said. So, we will try again tomorrow and keep trying every day to finish this story. And I will do my best to stop wasting time.
Filed under April 2011
Holiday Hangover
And yet another holiday has come and gone. It’s time to eat right again and also get back on the wagon with my hour a day. And because I missed my personal deadline I need to set up another goal.
I will have a draft of this new story finished before the end of the kids’ school year, which is June 7. That would be ideal because when schedules change I always have a hard time staying on track.
Filed under April 2011
I am Sick of Easter Eggs
I am so sick of Easter eggs. I have the same reaction to Halloween candy in October. This will make me sound old, but when I was a kid we had one small egg hunt at home and it was with REAL dyed eggs and it was no big deal. The Easter bunny brought a small basket and everyone dressed up for church.
This year there was a HUGE egg hunt at the gym where my daughter had her birthday party, we had to furnish filled plastic eggs for preschool and school parties and there will be another big egg hunt at church. On top of that I’ve been avoiding taking the kids to the grocery store because of the huge displays that have bee out since the day after Valentine’s (don’t get me started on that holiday). And what is the point of it all? I don’t agree with the school that insists on calling Easter eggs spring spheres, but I think we’re kind of missing the point. Anyone who does a Google search can look up the symbolism of eggs, which is fairly obvious without the internet. Eggs are a symbol of rebirth, and Christians translate that to Christ’s resurrection. So why all the candy? No matter how fun it is to hunt for thousands of eggs my children do not need that much candy! And I certainly do not need it floating around the house. At the moment my kitchen table looks like the Easter bunny’s workshop with all the extra plastic eggs. And all this during Lent!
Is the answer to forfeit all these fun and games? I’ll tell you I’m close to that. Should I keep the kids home from school on party days because it dilutes how special the actual holiday is? That seems kind of cruel since I’m not opposed to Easter eggs, just the quantity and frequency of them. Do I refuse to help with the event at church? That’s counterproductive because I feel the actual day is when we should be celebrating, not the 2 weeks before. How do I show my kids how much more special things are when you have them in moderation?
I think what we’ll do is tomorrow night collect all the detritus, empty the eggs, and set them aside for next year. Give a quick and definite end to the holiday (which is what we do with all the candy on Halloween as well). And I need to plan my attack for next year. Maybe I will win the lottery by then and we can take a vacation to Siberia during Lent.
Filed under April 2011
The Holiday Quandary
As Easter nears I’m stuck in the same place I find myself with every holiday. Things get busy, whether it be at the kids’ school or at home, and a day I would normally spend catching up on housework or working on my writing is now filled with activities. This is a good problem to have because it means I am not a hermit sitting in my shack, but it always gives me a feeling that I am skipping something or letting something slide.
When I’m already having a hard time fitting everything in my life, is it okay to skip on holidays? Stephen King reportedly writes everyday, even holidays. Is that part of his success? On the other hand I look at people in my job who never take vacations and continue to wear themselves down without becoming more successful. I think taking time off is good for you. At the same time, one hour is not very long and it is probably easier to fit it in a day when I am not working. I’m going to try to keep to my writing hour tonight and on Easter because that is 2 hours closer to my goals.
Filed under April 2011
Celebrate Earth Day in Style
A lot of “green” tips seem to be ways to cut back and reduce not only our carbon footprint, but our lifestyles too. That got me wondering if there are ways to live it up while being environmentally conscious, or are the two ideas mutually exclusive? I came up with a few ways to celebrate Earth Day in style:
- Buy new technology! Yahoo recently published an article stating that the increased use of the iPad was actually good for the environment. Because iPads are generally not kept plugged in all day (like a traditional computer) energy consumption can be reduced.
- Use an awesome, fancy water bottle. Remember all that water your doctor told you to drink? Well, go for it, but don’t use a new plastic water bottle each time. Treat yourself to a cool new sustainable water bottle. Some of them are kind of pricey, but hey, refilling it is cheaper than buying new bottles every day.
- Take a vacation. Not only is today Earth Day, it is National Park week and admission to all (at least Californian) National Parks is free through the weekend. National Parks like Yosemite not only have camping areas, but four-star hotels.
- Enjoy a night on the town. A lot of people are watching Netflix at home rather than going to the movies. Today Disney’s latest Earth Day movie, African Cats, hits theaters. Splurge and go to an IMAX theater.
- Take a mental health day and spend the day writing! Think of all that paper writers of previous generations used while writing their drafts. Not only can you work seriously on your hobby, but it is a completely paperless sport.
Filed under April 2011
Let Your Subconscious Work for You
I firmly believe the subconscious does work for you while you are doing other things. We’ve all had ideas come to us seemingly out of the blue. I’m having those kinds of thoughts all day long, often fully formed extensions of the story I’m working on. Now that I have been consciously writing every day (or trying to) I’ve written more back story in my head than ever before, and I know it is because I am working more consistently than ever before.
Is our subconscious like our metabolism? When it gets exercise does it work better while in rest? Or maybe it kicks into gear when there is something left unresolved in our conscious mind. Either way, the secret to getting work done by your subconscious is consistently working on it consciously!
Filed under April 2011
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