I think everyone in my household is suffering from mid-year blues. I feel as though I haven't yet got a handle on balancing my life-with-teenagers, teaching life and writing life. Guess which is suffering? Yes, you got it. The writing - because that has the quietest voice. Well, the quietest voice on a daily basis.
Teenagers are loud and pretty insistent in their demands - drive me here, please. Feed me now, please. Teach me to knit now, please. Come and see this. You'll love it. Let's have a dvd night together. Let's go out. Let's make a chocolate cake. Take me for a driving lesson, please.
These are all good things - and fun things (apart from the driving lessons which are exercises in facing death calmly). Teenagers should be heard - they won't stay teenagers.
My teaching life is equally demanding and loud - mark these assignments, answer the discussion boards, write these emails, participate in this meeting. There are good reasons for teaching which must be respected - and it's not all about the money.
My writing life whispers. You haven't been good to us. You have neglected us. We are sulking. It's easier to ignore this whisper. It's easy to say, well, never mind, you don't make much money, anyway. You didn't get shortlisted this year. You can wait.
But the whisper and the sulk are insistent. If they are ignored for too long, depression sets in. It's like a poison which spreads to everything - the teenagers, the teaching, the cooking - even the dogs. I become snappy and impatient. I become overwhelmed and lost. I lose focus, a sense of who I am, a sense of who I can be, a sense of purpose and most of all, a sense of joy.
So, this week I'm returning to the kind of schedule I used to keep when the kids were young and it was seemingly impossible to do anything that didn't involve strict routines. I'm returning to carving out an hour or an hour and a half, or even half an hour from my working day in which to honour writing self.
I'll begin by doing my morning pages a la Julia Cameron.
I suggest, if you have the mid-year blues, or are feeling overwhelmed by life and work, or underwhelmed by joy, you think about honouring your writing self.
Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way is an okay place to start. Or pick up a copy of Natalie Goldberg's Writing Down the Bones. Set aside your writing time as strictly as you'd set aside eating or exercising time. Think of it as food for your soul or exercise for your writing muscles. Honour yourself as an artist. It's quite possibly less time that you'd spend watching television, or ironing, or checking out Facebook. You can do it. You're worth it.
Showing posts with label Julia Cameron. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Julia Cameron. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 25, 2010
Tuesday, February 23, 2010
A new year begins -
Well, okay - we've had the New Year and the Chinese New Year and now it's the Teaching New Year - I think some celebration should mark this beginning - fireworks? champagne? No? Writing resolutions! Yes!
A number of students, a great number of students, have listed procrastination as one of the bad habits they have, time to write as something they lack - or will to write when there is a little time. What are ways to combat these very much self-inflicted but nonetheless real problems all of us grapple with?
Let's start with procrastination. There's a great tendency among all the writers I know to do anything other than the writing itself. We find ourselves making pickles, ironing the sheets and tea towels or cleaning the bath with a toothbrush - anything rather than sit down to a day's writing work. Deadlines speed some people up, but paralyse others.
One way I've found useful in stalling my habit of procrastination is to actually reward myself when I sit down to write. So, for example, I'll select a stack of cds to listen to - but only when I'm sitting at my desk writing. That can be incentive enough some days.
Timing your writing to coincide with the completion of a different task or event can work, too - I used to write while my children, then toddlers, watched Playschool. To this day, the music from Playschool makes my fingers twitch! For a long time I wrote every day after I walked the dogs - and that produced a definite start time for me. It was a good habit to form because the act of walking the dogs, allowed me to do a lot of pre-writing thinking and that meant that by the time I arrived home, I already had ideas about what I wanted to write.
Sometimes it's just simply making writing the first thing you do every day. Julia Cameron recommends this in her book, The Artist's Way - she calls this writing 'morning pages'. This can be difficult, particularly if you have small children, but the extra effort can reap benefits.
If it's simply too hard to write every day, you can try designating a particular day of the week your writing day - many people teaching within Professional Writing and Editing try to do this - it may seem hard to stick to this, particularly if you're working or parenting full-time, but to carve out even a regular afternoon a week is something. Then, for the rest of the week, you can make quick notes, jottings that will keep you on track when your writing day comes around.
It can help to have a writing buddy - you can make a writing date. Go somewhere together to write - a cafe, gallery or a park. You don't even need to share your writing at the end, if you don't choose to - though sometimes having someone's instant feedback can be gratifying.
If you live somewhere more remote, you could make an online writing buddy - maybe someone from this course. At the end of a writing session, you simply email your writing buddy - a message could be as short as 'I've done it! How about you?'
Creating a writing date for yourself can also be useful - again, this need not be anywhere special - sitting down in a park for half an hour, or a food hall, or even on a train, providing you use that time to write and observe can present you with interesting and unusual material - sometimes simply because you're out of your normal place of working. Local libraries often have desks for people to work on - and some (this could be a trap!) even offer wifi.
Try to treat your writing time as a joyful job. Don't answer the phone, if you can avoid it. Don't answer emails. Don't log onto the TAFE blackboard. Tell children, partners, parents and friends that you will be available only after you've done your work. Usually people are pretty good about this, particularly if you give them an actual time you'll be finished. Some writers I know offer visual clues to their families - they wear industrial earmuffs or work behind a closed door with a Keep Out sign.
All these might sound difficult but what you need to remember is that you won't ever be a writer without writing! So - writing resolutions, anyone?
I'm planning to work on short material this semester - just play around with some ideas I have, revise some material as well. My writing life will be curtailed by the hours I'm teaching but I'm carving two regular writing times out of my teaching week - I'm putting aside Thursday afternoons and Fridays for writing - or at least a part of each of these days. I'm also planning a regular artist's date with myself - whether that's catching up with fellow writers or visiting the gallery or a market - all with my notebook in hand.
Write on!
A number of students, a great number of students, have listed procrastination as one of the bad habits they have, time to write as something they lack - or will to write when there is a little time. What are ways to combat these very much self-inflicted but nonetheless real problems all of us grapple with?
Let's start with procrastination. There's a great tendency among all the writers I know to do anything other than the writing itself. We find ourselves making pickles, ironing the sheets and tea towels or cleaning the bath with a toothbrush - anything rather than sit down to a day's writing work. Deadlines speed some people up, but paralyse others.
One way I've found useful in stalling my habit of procrastination is to actually reward myself when I sit down to write. So, for example, I'll select a stack of cds to listen to - but only when I'm sitting at my desk writing. That can be incentive enough some days.
Timing your writing to coincide with the completion of a different task or event can work, too - I used to write while my children, then toddlers, watched Playschool. To this day, the music from Playschool makes my fingers twitch! For a long time I wrote every day after I walked the dogs - and that produced a definite start time for me. It was a good habit to form because the act of walking the dogs, allowed me to do a lot of pre-writing thinking and that meant that by the time I arrived home, I already had ideas about what I wanted to write.
Sometimes it's just simply making writing the first thing you do every day. Julia Cameron recommends this in her book, The Artist's Way - she calls this writing 'morning pages'. This can be difficult, particularly if you have small children, but the extra effort can reap benefits.
If it's simply too hard to write every day, you can try designating a particular day of the week your writing day - many people teaching within Professional Writing and Editing try to do this - it may seem hard to stick to this, particularly if you're working or parenting full-time, but to carve out even a regular afternoon a week is something. Then, for the rest of the week, you can make quick notes, jottings that will keep you on track when your writing day comes around.
It can help to have a writing buddy - you can make a writing date. Go somewhere together to write - a cafe, gallery or a park. You don't even need to share your writing at the end, if you don't choose to - though sometimes having someone's instant feedback can be gratifying.
If you live somewhere more remote, you could make an online writing buddy - maybe someone from this course. At the end of a writing session, you simply email your writing buddy - a message could be as short as 'I've done it! How about you?'
Creating a writing date for yourself can also be useful - again, this need not be anywhere special - sitting down in a park for half an hour, or a food hall, or even on a train, providing you use that time to write and observe can present you with interesting and unusual material - sometimes simply because you're out of your normal place of working. Local libraries often have desks for people to work on - and some (this could be a trap!) even offer wifi.
Try to treat your writing time as a joyful job. Don't answer the phone, if you can avoid it. Don't answer emails. Don't log onto the TAFE blackboard. Tell children, partners, parents and friends that you will be available only after you've done your work. Usually people are pretty good about this, particularly if you give them an actual time you'll be finished. Some writers I know offer visual clues to their families - they wear industrial earmuffs or work behind a closed door with a Keep Out sign.
All these might sound difficult but what you need to remember is that you won't ever be a writer without writing! So - writing resolutions, anyone?
I'm planning to work on short material this semester - just play around with some ideas I have, revise some material as well. My writing life will be curtailed by the hours I'm teaching but I'm carving two regular writing times out of my teaching week - I'm putting aside Thursday afternoons and Fridays for writing - or at least a part of each of these days. I'm also planning a regular artist's date with myself - whether that's catching up with fellow writers or visiting the gallery or a market - all with my notebook in hand.
Write on!
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