September Writing Goals

It's almost September! You might remember I recently decided to reevaluate my goals for the year and start setting small monthly goals that will (hopefully) keep me on track with what I want to accomplish in 2010.

September has its pros and cons in terms of making progress on my projects. On the plus side, I don't have class until September 27! This three-week break should help me get back in the groove with my writing, but I need to make sure I'm being mindful of all that freed-up time and using it wisely. However, we'll be traveling for two of my four school-less weekends. I need to make sure my goals are realistic given all the visiting we're in for.

That said, here's what I'm hoping for:

• 15 days of  20+ minutes of writing or editing.
  (As far as I can tell, I've done this for 8 days so far in August.)
• Work on editing my novel manuscript on at least 10 separate days.
• Set a date for a creative retreat weekend in late fall/winter.
• Finish the short story draft I started in August.
• Get my hands on some script-writing resources, or team up with someone who knows a thing or two about stage/screenwriting. Set a goal for starting a draft (and make sure it doesn't conflict with NaNoWriMo).
• See Five Women Wearing the Same Dress at Mobtown Theater.
• Register for NaNoWriMo 2010.
• Completely empty the portion of the basement I want to remodel, down to nothing but the bare floor and walls, and revise my budget/supply list for the project.
  (This will help get me closer to both a decluttered house and a better office/writing space.)
• Get out of the house for some cafe writing!

I'm honestly not sure if this sounds like too much or not enough to do in one month, mainly because I have a bad habit of setting (and not reaching) long-term goals and ignoring the need for short-term ones. I'll just have to see how I do this month and revise accordingly for October.

The Ebb and Flow of My Desk

You honor your writing and your writing self when you create a special place for your work. Bring to it all that supports and enhances your writing. Keep it clean and free from clutter. You know the old saying, that a cluttered desk is the sign of a cluttered mind. With all that mess, how can thoughts emerge without their edges catching on whatever is left lying around?

– Judy Reeves, Writing Alone, Writing Together: A Guide for Writers and Writing Groups

If a cluttered desk means a cluttered mind, then my desk is a perfect representation: always maintaining a calm, clear, productive, inviting space, but the clutter around the edges always threatens to tip the scales into claustrophobic panic.

Volume

Somehow, in getting to my class website (don't ask how, it's on my bookmarks toolbar!), I get waylaid on an art website for someone with whom I graduated high school.  Both of us went on to earn our BFAs, but in the years since then she has obviously continued producing visual art at an impressive rate.  I haven't maintained this kind of volume.

Mind you, I am writing, but I'm not submitting to literary magazines.  I'm not monitoring Art Deadlines List very closely and I'm not keeping up with Baltimore Art Blogs to see calls for submissions.  In short, I'm not filling out my CV.  The content under my "Exhibitions" and "Collections" headings is decidedly thin.

If I publish a novel that will certainly be a game-changer in terms of my artistic self-image, but for now I'm wondering: am I doing enough?  Art requires ambition above all else, and sometimes I fear I haven't established myself in a community of fellow artists, haven't been creating at the rate I should be.

At some point, just (ha, just) having a fat manuscript sitting in my writing folder won't be enough...will it?

Lately I've met a few artists who are "just sort of living right now," which I've found to be synonymous with being happily unemployed.  And in a state that doesn't ask people to provide proof that they're searching for jobs in order to collect unemployment benefits, why wouldn't they be?  However, there's a disconnect there, too.  A lot of creative people seem to feel art will just come to them, that inspiration is innate.  In truth, one of the best things art school taught me is hard work and ambition are as important as training and talent.

When I come home from deadlines at work only to work toward deadlines for school, I end up feeling like I need down time.  I feel entitled to squeeze in an hour of gaming or television.  Even though it feels like what I need at the moment, it doesn't feel like ambition.  And while we can't be frightfully ambitious 24/7, I'm unsure where to draw the line.

How necessary is downtime to sustain productivity?  How much should we be cutting out in favor of pursuing our dreams?

And, as I've asked myself many times before: do I really have the ambition it takes to pursue a long-term dream?

At the end of the day I think I can answer yes to that last question, but it would involve eliminating some of the more heinous timesucks from my life.  Disorganization is starting to make my life feel like one big ADD adventure again, and it's time to reign it in.

As I keep posting my writing and creative journeys, I think I'm also going to return some focus to the decluttering of life and home.  Simplifying and purifying.  Because time and inspiration aren't things we have innately, they're things we create in our lives.  And I think I need to create a lot more of both.

Bouncing Around, But Getting Things Done

Despite code red air quality alerts, unpleasantly hot (99°) temperatures, and a lack of sufficient air conditioning throughout my house, I made today's paid holiday hours productive ones.  This is encouraging, since the forecast is calling for highs of 103° for Tuesday and Wednesday.  Hopefully I'll be able to keep a positive outlook on life until things calm down (read: cool down) later in the week.

On the bright side, today felt more balanced than my life has in a long time.  I woke up in a good frame of mind, thinking about various professional development I've undergone lately, specifically where I've heard the words "don't fight yourself."  Clever girl that I am, I contemplated how I could apply this to my life at home, too.  I think ADD adults spend a lot of energy fighting our natures, and sometimes it's important to remember we need that energy for creating positive, self-affirming strategies for living our lives.

I'm past making excuses for my house: it has become a pit.  I love a clean, simple, orderly environment, so this makes me feel bad down to my core.  And since I've gotten behind on so much stuff, catching up seems positively overwhelming.  To make matters worse, the second I see clutter in the hallway, I tend to discount all my efforts in, say, our office.  Today I decided to be more reasonable, setting a goal of one room per day and no more.  So today I cleaned the bedroom, for real and true, and then accepted the fact that more work would lead to intense fatigue and eventually bad feelings about myself/the house/life in general.  Clutter in the hallway was okay, because it gets its own day (not today)!

This small victory really started me rolling, and after I was done I didn't go back to my reading for class (time for that later).  I took a break and played some WoW.  Then I went back to my reading, added 1000 words to my manuscript (exciting!), and took another WoW break.

I work best when my life is fragmented, likely because I lack the attention span for longer tasks anyway.  I get interrupted nonstop at work, but this rarely throws me off because, as I see it, I would have interrupted myself anyway.  My mind bounces from one thing to the next, and it's often best to preempt it if I can.  Forcing myself to work really hard on a single task (like cleaning out my basement) for a painfully long time leaves me feeling drained and often irrational.

Today, I encouraged myself to stop a task before I got super fatigued and celebrate my victory.  This left me feeling energized for the next activity, especially since I built in breaks for myself throughout the day.  In the end, I got an amazing amount of stuff done, including washing dishes, doing nearly all my reading for class this week, hitting level 75 with my druid, making my bedroom tidy and clean, and writing 1000 words on my novel.  Yay for days off from work!

May Rundown

June is here, May is over, and it's time to take a look over my goals for 2010 and see what I've been up to.  Struggling with ADD often means I lose track of the contents of my days pretty easily, so pausing every once in a while to reflect really helps me figure out what I'm doing with all this passing time.  While everyone at the office complains about doing their monthly reports during the first week of the month, I'm thankful for the benchmark/barometer.

May had 31 days to it this year, and I only sat down and did my daily writing practice for 21 of them.  That's barely even most of the time, so I need some work there.  On the bright side, I wrote a lot on some of those days, in addition to doing some good work on my manuscript.  I just need to make sure I'm carving out time every single day and not letting "extenuating" circumstances become an every-other-day occurrence.



In the latter half of May I finally got myself down to Single Carrot Theatre, which is certainly something I'd like to continue doing.  In college I had a friend who'd take me to plays, and I guess part of me thought I'd always have a person like that in my life.  This month I learned that maybe I need to be that person for others!

A plug for Baltimore folks: Single Carrot is in a great spot (Station North: lots of new art spaces, plus easily accessible and free of the parking and/or transit complications of Mt. Vernon or downtown) and provides an intimate theatre experience not to be missed.  The show I just saw was the sort I can measure by how long I spent cocking my head to one side—it's a slightly embarrassing habit when I'm really studying a piece of creative work.  Plus you get a complimentary glass of wine or soda and a cheerful greeting when you walk in the door!

Directly after our theater excursion, my husband left me all alone for a weekend, and I took advantage of the opportunity to spend the morning writing at Carma's Cafe in Charles Village.  Baltimore plug number two: Carma's is another absolutely can't miss.  Sitting for two hours and focusing solidly on my work was a challenge, but that's why I made it a goal in 2010!  That work session got me over a big editing hump, and I think this weekend I'll try dropping by the Evergreen, where all the trendy writers seem to hang out on their laptops.

In terms of big projects, I rededicated myself to editing my manuscript and got some really nice work done on it.  I also started decluttering the house and making way for my new work space by spending an entire weekend in the basement sorting through stuff (and deciding to give most of it away to the Salvation Army).  Big life news arrived on the scene, too, as I enrolled in an online MBA program concentrating in non-profit management.

While I'm not ready to move/create my office quite yet—our quick-and-cheap basement remodel needs to happen first—I did buy a real desk chair.  My back is thanking me at this very moment, and typing away at my desk feels so much nicer!

All in all, I feel good about May, if not the first half of June.  I've gone through a lot of rededication to my creative practice, and it feels good to be getting my life back again after my surgery disrupted the rhythm of things so much.

The First Step

After coming to the conclusion that no one in the world wanted to help me clean out my basement -- or even sit and make conversation with me while I did all the work myself -- I decided to make a weekend out of it all on my own.

The situation: about a year ago, my parents packed a van full of all my childhood/teenage possessions that still existed in their house.  My basement, which I'd just spent a long time cleaning and felt great about, was suddenly full of boxes upon boxes of completely unorganized junk.  A lot of it had memories attached, and the task of dealing with all that stuff was so big and nebulous I just avoided the basement altogether -- until this weekend!  Really, there's no pretty way to say it:



I began the day on Saturday with coffee in my Tomorrowland mug (which I love) and leftover brownies.  Delicious!



By the time I reached 4:00 this afternoon, every muscle in my body was tired, but I was only one Broadway musical away from the finish line (more on this in a minute).  The fatigue in my veins felt almost cleansing, pleasant to my calmed senses.  Cleaning out makes my whole life feel lighter.  By letting go of all the extraneous stuff in my life, I can give my mind room to breathe while really cherishing the artifacts I do choose to save from my past.

Remembering the 7 Habits, I began my weekend with the end in mind.  Clearing out the basement and building a room down there is the first step in a chain reaction that will give me a really nice writing space.  One of my goals for this year is to establish an "office" that acts as a writing studio, a space that I feel great about rolling out of bed and heading into to write in the morning.  Letting go of a lifetime of clutter (which is totally empowering anyway) will allow this to happen, and that awareness really kept me motivated while I worked.

In the course of my travels through the mess I found some angsty artwork from seventh grade and a truly scary marionette.





Also, rather than exhausting myself entirely early on, I made sure to pace myself and take breaks before I reached a state where I absolutely couldn't go on.  I started with on-the-go playlists on my iPod, but quickly began using musicals to divide my time into manageable chunks.  Not wanting to break up the story, I stayed put until each show was over.  I listened to:

Gypsy
Passion
Into the Woods (actually too long for this -- I got really tired by the end!)
Songs for a New World

Between musicals I made sure to take legitimate breaks: sit on the couch and read, play WoW, lay down, write in my notebook, etc.  And guess what: I made it!  Much like they do on reality TV, I sorted all the stuff I wanted to keep (actually less than I thought -- the picture below shows about 1/3 of it) into our storage room and left the main basement room full of boxes to give away.  Now to figure out where it can go!



All in all, it was a great and productive weekend. I even found a binder full of letters that inspired me toward a major writing project.  I've been waiting for the right protagonist to stumble into my life, and I think I've got him.  But that's "a whole nother" post, as they say.

And look, I even got a chance to pot some tomatoes and strawberries for late-summer snacking!

Good Things Today:

Every morning begins with Zeke's coffee for me.



One way you and your partner can be mutually inspiring is for one of you to be productive (and joyful about it).  My daily piano playing has begun to rub off on Doug, who has a whole repertoire of songs he's learned by ear and memorized.  He can't read music, but he can play Ben Folds Five's Brick now just from watching me practice.  Anyone want to play Name That Song for this video?



Got this in the mail on Friday.  After reviewing my favorite songs and seeing that they're all more or less right in my range, I'm way excited to try singing them.



A CLEAN DESK has made me so much more productive at the office, and I'm ready to start feeling those effects at home, too.  My desk hasn't looked like this in a long, long, time -- I feel like I've opened up a whole new world for myself!

Inspiration #22: Purging

I'm the kind of person who can see a pile of stuff that needs to be sorted through, shove it in a corner, and not touch it for two years.  Don't even try to imagine what happened when my parents brought a van full of my childhood possessions to my house and dumped them in the basement.  (Okay, fine, I'll admit it: I haven't really gone down to the basement to do anything but laundry for nearly a year and a half).

On the flip side, we learned all the way back on Inspiration #6 (wow, is this over yet?) that I need a clean, quiet, uncluttered work space.  Also, I secretly pine for a more minimalist life (Inspiration #12).  These are the things I feel I need to be most productive and most creative.

For the past few days I've been possessed by a strong desire to purge these clutter piles from my life, surround myself with smooth, uninterrupted surfaces.  As painful as the purging process can be, I also find it one of the most fulfilling chores I do around the house.  Today I felt extra rewarded by finding a total of $115 in gift cards to Target and Amazon.

Rewards like this are nice, especially when the path to my inspiring, clean, uncluttered work and living space is littered with things like random place cards from my wedding.  Or even better, a screw that, as of December 2, 2007, we can rest assured will never be usable again.  Wonderful.