Breaking Routines

Have you ever settled into a routine that you never intended to adhere to? Maybe you toss your coat over the chair day after day; so much so that when you can't find your coat, you're like, "Oh yeah, it's on the chair." Or maybe you're of the male persuasion and it's a lovely routine with the toilet seat. Yeah, well you get my drift. Routines can be as pure as the driven snow or as rotten as a field of onions after harvest.

My writing routine wasn't working. It wasn't working at all. So with the help of some writer friends, I revamped it. You see, the problem was that I hear voices. Yes, it's true; I hear voices! And what's worse, they come from inanimate objects. Dirty socks whisper,"You don't need to write. You need to wash me." Stacks of dishes sing a chorus of (to the tune of WE ARE THE WORLD), "We are the world...we are the dishes. You need to wash instead of wri-i-ite or we'll smell like fishes." And then there's the food in the fridge that simply states, "If you don't start dinner at 9am, you're a bad mom." So yeah, do I need to explain to you just what these voices did to me? Lots of crap accomplished but no writing!

So here's what I did on Sunday. I got out of the house. I went to a local coffee house and wrote my litte heart out. Coffee Perk is the perfect place for writing. It is mostly filled with students. Those students may be stressed and studying their little brains out, but something positive emits from them. It's like the atmosphere is laced with learning. And for a struggling writer-it's perfect! There are also locals who frequent it. Just the perfect mix actually.

But what about my beloved dishes, and laundry, and dinner? Well, I have been doing this FlyLady thing for a few months. Flylady is an organizational/home management sort of a website. The goal is to get your house cleaned, dinner on the table and live a peaceful life. Anyway-Flylady says that you can do anything for 15 minutes. So I did my usual routine (I'll talk about that in a later post) and then set the timer and cleaned for 15 minutes. Then I let the house and wrote for three hours. Why three hours? I will share that too in a later post...hehehe. Guess you have to come back.

I got more writing done in the past two days than I had in the last week. So my advice is this; if you are struggling to get words down on paper, take a close look at your routines. Ask yourself;

What is distracting me?
What am I thinking about?
What would make me write more?
What setting do I work best in?
What is my goal?
Am I meeting my goals?

Switch up your routines. I promise you will see results! ~K

New Addiction

OK, so I periodically watch the Food Network, but I seem to have become addicted. I keep watching show after show. I think it's the weather. Whenever autumn is upon us and winter isn't far behind, I get that nesting thang goin'. Watching the food channel inspires me. Makes me want to make something that doesn't involve opening a can. You know, make it all from scratch. But then I watch that Semi-Homemade show and come to my senses. I am enjoying this time in my life though. I just want to make my house a home. I don't have little ones under my apron and somehow with teenagers, the only thing that gets their attention is the smell of something good cooking...oh or a text message.

Text to son: GET REDY 2 PUT DOWN THE JOYSTICK. MAMA'S IN THE KITCHEN.

No More Anonymous Posts

As you may have seen, I have been hit by a number of comments that are questionable. So I am sorry to have to make the decision to limit comments to those that are not anonymous. I hope this won't make any legitimate people not post, but really didn't see any other way.

Life has been crazy, but I plan to be back and blogging regularly in September. See you then!

PS My son leaves for bootcamp this week. I will soon be a proud mom-of-a-Marine! ~K

My Son - The Marine?

Wow. My son has been talking about joining the Marines for several months now. He graduated in 2008 and is 19-years old. I knew he was serious, but somehow I needed a bit more time to process this. But, like it or not, today's the day! He is making the three-hour drive with his recruiter to sign the papers. I'm not sure what I feel, or what I'm supposed to feel...pride? fear? uncertainty? wonder? I just don't know.

How do you measure success?

I have read that Stephen King writes five pages a day. Supposedly, in a year it amounts to something like a 90,000 word novel. Pretty impressive. And five pages sounds totally attainable to me. But today, as I was searching this, I learned about R.L. Stein. Remember him? I do. His GOOSEBUMPS series made him a best selling author. But it did something even more important. It got my little reluctant reader to read obsessively. So there's a special place in my heart for R.L. Stein.

So anyway, I was reading about Mr. Stein here; http://www.hauntedcomputer.com/scottst52.htm and learned that he is now in retirement but can't seem to stop writing. He writes five pages a day but says, "Five pages a day isn't a writing career." Hmmmm...he just might be wrong.

Do you have a daily, monthly, or yearly goals? How do you measure them?

Ch-ch-ch-ch changes

We hear a lot about the "empty nest syndrome." I wonder what the stats are on an empty nest that takes like 12 years to empty? It is easier on Mama and Papa bird? Or does it just drag out the inevitable? When my last son was born, my older son was 4 and his sister was 14, so yeah...our nest is slowly dribbling out the bottom. Or maybe they're jumping out of the nest. Anyway---I'm belaboring this. Suffice to say, my oldest son moved out last weekend. Boohoo! He pretty much kept to himself and his own life for the last few years, so I was sure I wouldn't miss him that much (I barely saw him afterall). Wrong! I miss him like a crazy Mama Bird! But it is fun and good to see him come into himself, even if it is in a tiny little basement apartment less than a half mile away.

But here's the good part. My tiny little writing room that is nestled at the end of the upstairs with no door and heat that doesn't seem to want to join me at the writing desk, will soon be empty. As my youngest son moves into his big brothers room, that will empty one very nice room with windows across an entire side of it. It took me a week to realize a new room would be empty. Yahoo! I'm so excited. But there is a lot of work to be done.

I haven't been terribly productive, so it's time to get back to it.

Parallel Writing

A write-in is something that is encouraged for people who participate in National Novel Writing Month (nanowrimo). You get together with other writers at a specified location for a specified amount of time and write. You're each working on your own novel of course. If you have had children, you probably know the term, "parallel play." Parallel play is when two kids may sit close to each other, and look as if they're playing together, but they're really playing different things, and all by themselves. They just happen to be in close proximity. Well, the grown-up version of that is called a nanowrimo write-in...LOL.

Our write-ins were small...OK very small. The most that ever showed up were three writers, me included. Usually it was just two of us. But an amazing thing happened during that time at the coffee house. I learned something about myself, about my writing. Though the coffee house is full of live, laughter, and whirring espresson machines, it's not nearly as distracting as a sink full of dishes and seven piles of laundry. I got more continuous writing done at that coffee shop than I'd ever get at home. So I'm continuing my write-ins, though now I don't have any other writers to parallel write with....LOL

If you're stuck in a rut, give it a try. I highly recommend mixing it up once in a while, or as in my case, on a regular basis. How 'bout every Tuesday at 6pm?

PS What does the photo have to do with all of this? Keep coming back and I bet you'll figure it out. More to come.