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Three Things I Learned From Writing Every Day

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It’s December 31st and I have successfully completed the December Writing Challenge. I have blogged every day for this month. Although there were a few days that I didn’t meet the word count or the posting time, I did meet the goal of writing every day. And through the process I have learned three valuable lessons.

  1. You can alway find time to write. There have been plenty of times this month, including this very moment, when it wasn’t convenient to sit down and write. However, I didn’t allow myself to be stray away from my goal. I prioritized my time. Sometimes that meant getting up earlier in the morning. Other times it meant pulling away from other activities. Either way, I made time to write.
  2. The words will come if you give them time. There were several times when I sat at my computer without a clue as to what I would write about. I would actually start typing words like, “I don’t know what to write” or “I don’t feel like doing this”, and slowly but surely the words would come. In fact, the days that I didn’t know what to write were often the best days. Those post would get more likes than the post I spent more time thinking about.
  3. There is an audience out there who is interested in what you have to say. When I started this challenge, I didn’t really think people would follow or even notice what I was doing. But amazingly enough, just when I would start to feel discouraged or want to give-up, I’d receive an email from someone commenting on one of my post or someone new would begin to follow my blog. Knowing that I wasn’t writing in oblivion kept me going. It’s made me think quote from Field of Dreams is true: “If you build it, they will come.”

I’m glad I took the challenge. It’s been a great experience. But I am also glad it’s over. I’m really looking forward to a day off. I’ll be back in a few days, but now I have to go get dressed from New Years Eve. 

Have a wonderful and safe New Years!

Until next time. . .

December Writing Challenge · Inspirational Musing · Uncategorized

Setting an Intention for the New Year

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Often at the beginning of yoga the teacher will talk to students about setting an intention for their practice. This is designed to help students focus their awareness and attention on a quality or virtue they want to cultivate on the mat. The thought is that by incorporating a specific quality or virtue into your practice, you will be able to carry it into your life off of the mat.

In the past, I would always select huge concepts like inner peace or patience as my intention. However, my awareness and attention during class was completely focused on either the inflexibility of my body and/or the difficulty of the pose. It isn’t a surprise that I rarely left class feeling any sense of inner peace or patience. During a recent class, I decided to set a basic intention of accepting my body for where it is. Whenever I had difficulty with a pose, I gently reminded myself that whatever I could do was enough. And as a result, not only did I leave class feeling more at peace, throughout the rest of the day I found myself being more gentle in my self-talk. That experience totally changed the way I experience yoga.

I’ve been thinking a lot about what it means to set an intention, especially as we approach the New Year. The goals or resolutions that we set are determined by what we want to accomplish in the coming year. Lose weight. Find a job. Write a book. Publish book?. But these ideas come from our thinking mind rather than a longing from our highest self*. An intention is birthed at the core of our heart where we find our deepest truth. It’s our most heartfelt desire and realizing it leads to a sense of fulfillment.

We all want to experience the satisfaction of living a fulfilled life. So we set goals and make resolutions in January to guide our steps. But often, like my quest of inner peace in yoga class, we come away frustrate because our attention and focus drifts. We get too busy to go to the gym. We too tired after work to write, so we watch television instead. It takes too much effort to count points or whatever the diet requires. And at the end of the year we become a bunch of cynics, who don’t make resolutions because they “never stick”.   

What if instead we set a small intention for the year that speaks to our heart? It’s harder to figure out exactly what that should be, because we have to quiet our brain and actually listen to our heart. The heart is soft-spoken and easily discouraged. So give it time. Do that thing today that it’s urging you to do.

Go for a walk.

Read a book.

Take a nap.

Do whatever you need to do to listen. I’m going to paint.

Until next time. . .

Read more about Setting an Intention:

*Why Do We Set Intentions in Yoga?

Sankalpa: Going Beyond Resolutions

The Power Behind Setting An Intention In Yoga

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My Imaginary Dinner Party

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Today at lunch, a friend asked what three literary characters would I invite to a dinner party, and what would I serve.

I took me a while to answer the question. Mostly because I tend to think more about the authors of novels than the characters. So it would have been easier to come up with three authors.

Ernst Hemingway, of course, is first on the list. Though he isn’t my favorite author, I find myself drawn to his writing. Consequently, I read at least one of his novels every year. I would also invite Sylvia Plath. The Bell Jar is definitely one of my favorite books. And while I was in grad school, I read a collection of her short stories, essays and diary excerpts that taught me a ton about how our personal diaries feed our work. The third person would be a toss-up between Jane Austen and Langston Hughes. I’m inclined to pick Langston Hughes. He is my all-time-favorite poet and a character in my novel. But I imagine Hemingway making the party into an old boy’s club discussion if there was another man there. Nonetheless, I pictured the four of us (either Jane or Langston) drinking wine and talking about writing. How cool would that be!

While I played this scenario over in my mind, my friend was still waiting for an answer. I thought about taking a cop-out by answering the question I liked better, but that’s kind of obnoxious.I didn’t want to be that guy. You know, the one who always has a “better” idea.

So I thought about all the books that I have read and tried to pick three characters who I would love to have a conversation with. At the top of that list is Jane Eyre, followed by Elizabeth Bennett and then Adah Price from the Poisonwood Bible. All of them were strong women whose strong beliefs echoed my own in some ways. I imagined the four of us discussing societal and religious constraints that have been placed on women.

Once I told my friend who I would invite, she wanted to know what we would be eating. I hadn’t thought about that. I was too busy imagining the particulars of the conversation. So much so that I thought it would make a great writing prompt for a short story, which I might be writing now if I didn’t have to cook dinner and wrap Christmas presents.

It’s interesting how many ideas I’ve had l since I started this challenge. Let’s hope that the momentum keeps up after this month is over.

I’m so glad my friend posed that hypothetical question over lunch. Not only was it a welcome relief from the tedium of Christmas shopping, but it has my brain spinning with ideas. I’d love to write a story about either one of those imaginary conversations.

I’m curious about who you would invite and what you would talk about. Post your answers in the comment section below.

Oh and by the way, I would serve pasta. It’s my go-to dish. In fact, it’s what I’m going to make right after I post this blog.

Until next time. . .

Inspirational Musing · Uncategorized

Grown-up Christmas List Part 2

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I’d like to start my Christmas shopping, but don’t have any idea of what to buy anyone. I asked my kids to give me a list of what they want. My son said that’s too easy. Instead he suggested I think about what I would like him to have. The first time I asked my daughter she gave me a list of what she called lame-things-to-get-for-Christmas – a dressy winter coat, ear buds and moccasins with fur (but not UGGs). But then she made it clear that she would be quite disappointed if she received anything off this list. Practical, but not fun. When I asked her a week later for the real list, she replied that she would get back to me.

That was two days ago and still no list.

It’s hard to think up a wish list when you have everything you need and most of what you want. Not to mention the fact that most of our closets and drawers are stuffed to the brim. The overflow moves to the garages, and when that’s full to a storage unit. And as a result, there is more than 2.35 million square feet of self-storage space in the United States, which is equivalent three-times the size of Manhattan island.

Those statistics make the idea of a grown up Christmas list more compelling. The focus would be on the change we’d like to see in the world and/or ourselves.

I’ve been thinking a lot about this concept and decided I should practice what I preach. So here are the five things I want for Christmas.

  1. I want the food I eat to be an extension of my faith and integrity. It should be honoring to my body. It should come from farms and facilities where the people are treated with dignity and paid a living wage. And the meat should come from farms with husbandry and management practices that promote animal welfare. I’m sure there are those who might argue that eating meat in general doesn’t promote animal welfare, but that’s a debate for another time.
  2. I want walking and yoga to be more than just something I do occasionally. I want it to be the way I live. I want to crave the activity like coffee in the morning. I want those two activities to be my go to for refreshment and renewal.
  3. I want to eliminate the stigma associated with mental illness. To see it treated with the same compassion and concern that we treat cancer or other illnesses so that we can give people the help they need.
  4. I want compassion and love to be the driving force between our interactions with one another.
  5. And on a personal note, I want to be a part of book club that deeply discusses books from the point affecting social change.

A bit lofty and difficult to shop for, I know. But writing that list has helped me figure out what to buy.  I might not need a list from my kids after all.

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Happy Birthday, Frank!

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Today is Frank Sinatra’s 100th birthday. I’ve been looking forward to it all week, and I’m not quite sure why. Maybe it’s because his music seems to chronicle the details of my life.

“My Way” was one of my father’s favorite songs. I can still see him behind the wheel of his black 1974 coupe de ville, singing it as if it was his personal anthem. The stanza, “For what is a man, what has he got? If not himself, then he has naught. To say the things he truly feels.”, perfectly describes the way he lives his life.

Without a doubt, “My Kind of Town”, is my absolute favorite Sinatra song. For the twelve years that we called Chicago home, it was my theme song. My heart soars every time the skyline comes into view during the initial approach into Ohara airport. And sappy as it sounds, I begin to sing:

This is my kind of town, Chicago is
My kind of town, Chicago is
My kind of people too
People who smile at you
And each time I roam, Chicago is
Calling me home, Chicago is
Why I just grin like a clown
It’s my kind of town.

And when we moved to Atlanta the words, “And each time I leave, Chicago is. Tuggin’ my sleeve,” would bring tears to my eyes.

“The way you look tonight” reminds my of my husband. He went through a serious Sinatra stage about fifteen years ago. It was the only music he would listen to. One night when he came home from work, he pulled me away from cooking made me dance with him to that song. The memory of him whispering, “And that laugh wrinkles your nose. It touches my foolish heart” still makes me smile.

There are so many more Sinatra moments that I could write about, but I’ve got to get ready for tonight’s Holiday party.

HAPPY 100TH BIRTHDAY, FRANK!  I’ve got your under my skin.

 

 

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The Metropolitan Museum of Art: Inspiring and Money-saving

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The one activity I love more than writing is shopping. So whenever I go to Manhattan, I rarely make it off of Fifth Avenue. Something about walking down that street with a bunch of bags in my hand really trips my trigger. But believe it or not, last Friday I decided to branch out. I spent the afternoon at The Metropolitan Museum of Art.

I only had a three hours to explore the museum, so I researched which exhibit I wanted to visit before I left Atlanta. I selected The Steins Collect: Matisse, Picasso, and the Parisian Avant-Garde, a special exhibition open through June 3, 2012. I’ve never read anything by Gertrude Stein, but Hemingway wrote a lot about her in A Moveable Feast. I was also familiar with her influence on Pablo Picasso from a guided tour of a Picasso museum in Barcelona. And I loved Monica Truong’s fictional account of the Parisian household she shared with Alice B. Toklas in The Book of Salt. I had enough knowledge of the famous literary and artistic salons hosted at 27 rue de Fleurus to not only enjoy the collection, but also study it (from a totally non-art history perspective).

As I walked around looking at the paintings, I was a little intimidated by the artist standing around the galleries sketching paintings. I wanted to be able to translate what I was seeing into something I could use for my writing. But then I came across  Melancholy Woman by Pablo Picasso. It made me want to write.

The color and texture totally set the mood of the painting. The layered shades of blue, mossy green and gray made me feel the despair. I longed to be able to evoke such powerful emotions with words. But often I struggle to find the right words to capture intensity of a feeling. I end up writing around the mood – telling rather than showing.

I almost concluded it would have been easier to be a painter until I noticed Head of a Sleeping Woman (Study for Nude with Drapery) by Pablo Picasso. It hung next to eight studies of the same subject done with different media (watercolor and gouache, oil wash, tempera and watercolor, Conte crayon, gouache) and on a variety of surfaces (paper, canvas, paper mounted on board, paper mounted on canvas, paper mounted on panel and cardboard).

Including the word study in the title suggests Picasso was playing with the subject and the form. He used aspects of the eight other pictures to create the final painting. It screamed revision. It also confirmed the need to spend time with you work studying the various pieces that create the whole. So, I concluded that in order to evoke a mood in words, the writer has to go back and inhibit the moment from a variety of perspectives and vantage points, creating a study of the subject. I stood next to a woman sketching the painting as I wrote my notes on my Iphone.

I felt like an artist. It was almost as if I were in one of the Stein’s salons.

As I wandered through the rest of the exhibit, I discovered Gertrude Stein was often the subject of several sculptures, drawings, painting and photographs. The artist who visited her salons would have her pose for them and in return she would write word portraits of the artist. I was totally intrigued by the way she merged art and words.

Just before I left the exhibit, I stopped at a photograph of Gertrude Stein at her desk with Alice B. Toklas standing in the doorway. The neatness of Stein’s desk and Toklas position outside of the office spoke to me. Something in Stein’s face suggested that her office was a sacred place for her work. It made me realize how much I had let the chaos of my life encroach on my art. I felt the need to reclaim my creative space. I suddenly wished I could talk to Gertrude Stein about writing and art. So I bought her book, The Autobiography of Alice B. Toklas, in the gift shop on my way out.

I’ll let you know what I discover.

The day after I visited The Met, I found myself on Fifth Avenue going from shop to shop. But it just didn’t feel the same. I kept thinking about the magnificent pieces of art I had seen the day before. I wanted to go back and wonder around another gallery. I purchased a tube of lipstick and went back to the hotel.

Who knew visiting The Met could save you a ton of money?

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The Danger of Silence

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My morning started off promising. Last night I started to revise a chapter from a novel I wrote a few years ago. Words and ideas flowed like a well-fed spring. But instead of going back to what I was working on last night, I decided to check my email. I should have known my day was off course when I spent twenty minutes (probably longer) responding to an ongoing discussion related to a project I’m working on. Formulating my thoughts soaked up the little bit of creativity I had. I tried to savage my day by working on an unfinished blog. But when I heard the chime that signaled I had another email, I took the bait.

It was a message from a woman who attends the same church I do. She had just found my contact information on her desk and had some volunteer opportunities I might be interested in.  A few months ago I was looking for something to get involved with, but I had dismissed working with her organization because it was pregnancy center.

My first inclination was to respond to her email by saying that I too busy to help. I even wrote the email, but then I deleted it. I felt I owed her a better explanation, but I didn’t want to say what I was really thinking. I tried to go back to writing my blog, but I was blocked. I turned off my computer and grabbed a craft book to read. But I kept thinking about the email. Then it occurred to me, my silence on the subject was dangerous not only to me, but to my writing.

Now before you jump to your own opinions about the subject of abortion, hear me out. I have completely given my life to Jesus Christ. He is the Lord and Savior of my life. I have chosen to live my life in a way that would be pleasing to Him. That includes adhering to certain values. So I don’t believe abortion is the right. However, I also don’t believe I can make that decision for another woman. I praise God that I have never been in a situation where I considered it an option. But my heart aches for the women who have.

So my problem isn’t so much that the organization tries to give women an alternative, as it is the way they go about it. Their website opens the home page with a song that starts like a steady heartbeat. The information they provide uses phrases like “death of the embryo” to shame women for considering abortion. Maybe it’s the writer in me that has a problem with the covert way of they communicate their message. Or maybe I believe that a woman in a pregnancy crisis needs honesty and support without the hidden agenda.

Now, understand I would never personally recommend that a woman have an abortion. However, I respect a woman’s right to choose. Does that make me a bad Christian? I’ve struggled silently with that question, especially since neither of the camps offers the peace I need to resolve my thinking about the subject. There is so much more to the issue that never gets discussed. One side never tells you about the remorse a woman feels years after her decision. The other side never tells you about the child who grows up wondering if his or her parent would have been better off if he or she hadn’t been born. I’m particularly familiar with that one. I was the product of an unplanned/unwanted pregnancy. There were some who advocated that my mother have an abortion, but she decided to have her baby. And since both of my parents were Christians, there was a shotgun wedding. They had a horrible marriage. Once I learned the math of gestation, I started to blame myself for their problems. As a child I reasoned that if I had never been born, they would have had a better life. It wasn’t until I was in high school that I actually shared that thought with a friend. Bless her for telling me I had nothing to do with their decision to get in that predicament in the first place.

So when I think about abortion, I can’t find any comfort in taglines or easy solutions. The crisis of an unplanned/unwanted pregnancy is too complicated for that.

Being open in this post scares the crap out of me. I fear it will alienate people on both sides. But being a confident writer means not letting fear silence your voice.

So the writing lesson here is don’t back away from topics or issues that frighten you. There may be something that you write that speaks to another person. Even if it doesn’t, you have expressed something that needed to be said. And that is what writing is all about.