This writing thing

I was perusing links on my blog, making sure they weren't all dead. I hit the First 50 Words link, and the post for yesterday is about a writing workshop the author attended. In part of the preface, she mentioned something that was said in the workshop:

Writing practice hasn’t changed. You write for 10 or 20 minutes. You read. You do it again. You don’t edit, cross out, worry about spelling, you just write. You do this every day. You show up and write.

How do you do this? How do you not edit, cross out, or worry about spelling? I can't NOT do it. I edit while I type, automatically. I might edit later, but I edit while I type without thinking about it. I also correct spelling. If a word gets a little red underline (I'm using Firefox which checks my spelling as I write), then I automatically correct it. How do you let all this go and just write?

And why does 10 or 20 minutes seem so short, yet when the time arrives it seems so long? And I just did it again - edited that sentence 3 times before typing the period at the end. AARRGGHHH.

And now, after having gotten going on this, it's time to close the laptop and go to work. What I want to do is make more coffee, sit here in this easy chair, and keep reading and writing. But as Paul said "For what I want to do I do not do, but what I hate I do." I know he was talking about sin, but it fits my situation right now.

And now I'm late for work. Well, late for leaving for work which will most likely make me late for work unless I break some traffic laws along the way.

I Remember Christmas

(This is in response to the writing prompt at First 50 Words for 12/15/07)

I remember Christmas as a child. Well, even more that just as a child, but all the way through my teenage years, into college and early adulthood. Christmas was great. I loved the Christmas season. Yes, as a small child this often meant I loved it because of the gift potential. But the older I got, the more I loved it for the experience.

Christmas was a time to get away from the world. There was always a long break from school and the days started to run into each other. Even after college I would still somehow manage to get time off at Christmas, typically the week between Christmas and New Year's Day, so I could travel home and have that same feeling of time shifting and stresses of this world going away.

I am the youngest of four. As my older siblings grew up and left home, they would come home to visit on the holidays. In later years meant bringing their spouses and children. There were always lots of people around the house. There were hours spent on playing games, watching movies, and generally just spending time together. Yes, there were always gifts, and several package opening times as people would arrive a day or two after the actual day, but that wasn't the best part. The best part was the time where we just got to hang out together. Eating my mother's cooking. Spending time with my dad in his workshop. Going with my dad, after he had retired, to the "Grumpy Old Men Coffee Club" at the local coffee shop. I absolutely loved Christmas.

Please don't misunderstand this, though. The focus of Christmas in my family was definitely the birth of the Savior. This wasn't just an excuse for the family to spend time together. We absolutely knew and celebrated the "reason for the season". And part of that was the great times we had together as a family.

I don't get nearly as excited about Christmas anymore. About 10 years ago, my mother died. And a few years later, my dad died. They both had long, fruitful lives, and were married over 50 years. But without them and their home in my small hometown, Christmas just doesn't seem the same. Everyone here in the city is always in such a rush. We never seem to get everything done before the 24th. I guess with no deadlines like having to leave on a particular day to get home in time for Christmas, things get pushed back until the very last minute. Somehow that relaxation I felt over Christmas in the past is gone. I still take the time off of work, and still get to sleep late, cook a big breakfast for my wife and myself, go to movies, hang out, play games, and all that other fun stuff, but the complete decompression never really seems to get here.

My sister lives in a small town near the city where I live. Her children are grown now and have children of their own. This year my wife and I are spending Christmas Day at their house, watching small children open gifts and play with new toys, eating good food, playing games, and laughing together. The other day my sister and I talked about gifts and decided not to get gifts for each other. The best possible gift this Christmas is a chance to have that old Christmas feeling again. I am actually excited about it. For the first time in several years.

Heavenly Father, as we prepare for the arrival of Your Son, our Savior, please help us feel the joy You mean for us to feel at this time of the year and always. And please help us share that joy with those around us that may not have any joy in their life. In Your Name we pray, Amen.

Climbing back on the horse

Mentally I treat September (post Labor Day) as kind of a mini-January. Time to get a fresh start on things, revive habits that I've let die (especially over the hot summer months), things like that.

My plans for next week:
Resume my morning exercise before going to work
Resume my blogging - at least 3 days a week
Resume my morning quiet time.

This will result in less sleeping in. But maybe I'll start going to bed before midnight. That'd be nice.

I just read that last sentence. Apparently I've suddenly gotten old.

Back to writing

The laptop still isn't fixed, though I'm closer to getting it there. Just need to order the right part, probably getting it in an Ebay auction, and get it installed. Hopefully that will take care of it.

Though I haven't posted here in a while, I think about this blog probably every day. And every day I cringe at the fact I haven't updated in so long. And that makes the task seem even that much harder, so I put it off for another day. And that keeps going, and going, and going.
I recently had a breakthrough on this front. I might have had this breakthrough before - I need to go back and read the archives and see - but basically I've figured out that every post doesn't have to be some deep thought or great personal development to be valid. I need to not be so freaking serious. I need to start posting about whatever I'm currently excited about, reading, listening to, cool link I found, or whatever. Basically stop taking this so seriously, so maybe one day I can take this more seriously.

So here it is. The first post of the rest of my blog life. What is this, new beginning #33 or something? The real great part is that it's Thursday, and I'm leaving town tomorrow night for the weekend and going where there is no cell phone access, much less any interweb access. Hopefully I'll still have this passion when I get back.

And I'm even taking the risk of posting this from work. Most of the times when I feel inspired to post something are when I'm at work. I mean, I sit in front of a computer all day. Lots of days the last thing I want to do when I get home is sit in front of a computer some more. I'm going to try doing this more here and there from work, and hopefully stay employed in the mean time. Wish me luck. And please stay tuned.

Woodpecker (from First Fifty Words)

The other day as I waited in my car for the ice to thaw on the windshield, I looked out the passenger window to my right. My neighbor has a magnolia tree in his yard next to my driveway. On the trunk of that tree was a woodpecker.

He wasn't pecking. He was checking holes that he or some other woodpecker had already pecked for any new prey that might have shown up. I'm not sure how successful he was, because once my car thawed out and I put the transmission in reverse, he flew away. About that time I wished I'd had my camera with me to grab a picture of him before he flew away. He was absolutely beautiful.

I live in a part of the country that rarely gets below freezing. Birds come here in the winter to hang out, or at least stop by here on their way further south. As I sat there and watched that woodpecker I wondered how confused he must be. Confused about the cold. Confused about where his dinner was. After all, he's not used to all this ice around here. He may not realize that makes all the bugs dig in deeper - deeper in the ground or deeper in the tree. I hope he found something to eat.

New Writing Resource

Thanks to God's Child at Radio Ventriloquist, I have a new resource on writing, First Fifty Words. Every day, First Fifty Words will post a topic and a lead off of fifty words about that topic. You add your own fifty words on the topic. From the About page:

To practice writing, pick a topic, any topic, and start writing. Don’t judge, don’t edit, just write. For normal practice, after a certain period of time, perhaps 10 minutes, stop writing. For this blog, you are invited to leave a comment with the first 50 words of your writing on the topic. I’ll pick the topics–you write 50 words.

It goes on to say that if what you come up with turns out to start something in you, then go back to your own blog to finish it.

I know I won't do it every day, but hopefully I will do it fairly regularly. And I'm not sure if I'll put the first 50 words there or just here. But either way, it is a good idea as well as a good resource. Check them out and participate.

The writing habit

A new year. New resolutions. New attempts at getting that writing habit going again.

The main thing that seems to be holding me back is the overwhelming sense of this project (for lack of a better term.) The prospect of having to post every day seems like too much to manage, especially after my typical long PITA commute home every day. And to some degree I'm the kind of person that says (to myself, in my head) "Self, if you're not going to do it 100%, don't do it at all." Not that all the posts need to be super compelling, or even interesting, but just be there and be something besides "Another post today because I have to."

Via Mark Lee's blog, I found a link to Creativity for Life. I haven't really had a chance to check it out yet, but maybe that site will be some help in sparking my creativity.

Stick it out with me. Comment and help motivate me.