This is a picture of what I call my Idea Lamp. Things I most need to remind myself about my work are taped and pinned and clamped to the shade and even to the shaft.
The boldest print is allotted to the reminder I need most of all. Though sticky notes encroach nonetheless. “SPEND MORE TIME WRITING” it reads in solid caps and purple Sharpie ink underlined five times.
Those words require that much force of emphasis for me. Especially right now for two reasons. The first is obvious. “At this time of the rolling year…” Charles Dickens would begin. I continue “… I catapult myself into everything BUT writing.
I tell myself I’m doing it for family or for the sake of the season and its spirit or simply because I enjoy the leap. All of these are true but they don’t tell the entire tale or warble more than a few verses of the entire carol.
I’m on vacation to be sure. Vacation from what? Vacation from the problems that writing never fails to impose. Those problems are the second reason I need a resolution with the power of a well-aimed boot behind it to catapult me back to SPENDING MORE TIME WRITING.
My current challenges involve the in-progress fourth novel in my ongoing series. The new story is titled A Villain for Vanessa and it poses special problems. As special as your problems with your current project whatever it may be.
These are the boulders that make up my particular roadblock. We each have our own boulders and our own roadblocks. You and I and everyone else who has ever written down words we hope will be read – from Bob Cratchit’s pen nib to now.
We each have a story of what our individual boulders may be and how formidably they’ve been stacked in our personal path. The common element among us is that all of our boulder blockades are cemented together by doubt.
We doubt that we know what to do or how to do it or even if we can do it at all. Doubt is a killer disease and for us there is only one cure. SPEND MORE TIME WRITING. Write up one boulder and over the next and through the fissures between when we find them.
Write so furiously forward the doubts can’t overtake us – and when they inevitably do – write straight past them and beyond.
Meanwhile keep your Idea Lamp burning bright at this and every other time of the rolling year. I resolve to do the same. Happy New 2016.
Alice Orr – www.aliceorrbooks.com.
RR
A Vacancy at the Inn is Alice’s Riverton Road Romantic Suspense Book 3 – A Holiday Season Novella. Just 95 cents. The Best New Year’s Bargain Ever at http://www.amazon.com/dp/B017RZFGWC.
Alice, truer words never spoken. And it’s like any other discipline, we need to plow through. The rewards are there. But we have to get past the point where it hurts.
Kathy Bailey
Hi Again Kathy. I love the image of plowing through. I picture one of those old-fashioned forked plows breaking the clods of dirt and making a furrow where seeds can be planted. Then the planter tends the seedlings but also trusts the elements to cooperate. We have to do all of that as writer. Bread down the clods. Scatter the seeds. Allow the forces of our own writerly imaginations to shine and nurture our work so it can grow. But it is hard work. Perhaps not backbreaking in the same way as the plowman’s labors may be – though I’ve risen from the desk aching many times. Sometimes however we must break our hearts to do our work. To be more specific – we must break our hearts open and let our true stories pour forth. Here’s to a New Year of breaking open and pouring forth for all of us. Alice
Happy New year and charge forward with a
Sense of power and gratitude! Joy
I love the name Joy and you do certainly embody it. Charging forward with power in gratitude. What an image. What a prospect. Happy New Year to you to Joy. And thank you for the joy you are.
Dear Joy. You have commented on my blog posts in the past. I invite you to explore my most recent series. It is titled “Oh No I’m a Caregiver – Dementia – Our Cautionary Story.” These posts are of special significance to me. Dementia appears to be a reality destined to assault all of our lives in one way or another eventually. I believe that the story I have to tell – through my initial post and others yet to come at https://www.aliceorrbooks.com – has valuable insights to offer. For this reason, I hope you will read it and pass it on to others so that they might benefit from what I am learning and from those insights.
For example… My husband Jonathan, who has recently been diagnosed with dementia, is actually quite fine at this early stage. He is engaged in lots of cognitively powerful activities. He writes original memoir pieces that are very good and says this is the result of sitting in on so many of my writing workshops over the past forty-five years. He now finds more joy in writing than the drawing and music that were his usual creative pursuits in the past. This is good because, as you know, portraying characters and composing scenes require a deep level of focus and detail concentration which is very beneficial for him. He also loves jigsaw puzzling – the 1500-piece variety. Again much concentration is required plus he has fond memory associations of doing puzzles with his mom when he was a boy. He also reads a lot – challenging books, as well as his favorite New York Times articles. He does regular physical exercise and has also begun gardening at our church which has a large planted space in sore need of attention. Medically, he is taking a basic drug that has disappeared his brain fog for the timebeing. We also have excellent medical professionals on our team and on our side.
Dementia is not like the tv commercials portray it to be. Their purpose is to ramp up fear and sell very expensive, very dangerous drugs. There is a long, gradual period before extreme changes begin, and the aggressiveness these ads emphasize can often be mitigated with simple mood medications that are harmless and affordable.
Meanwhile, there is a real-life story to be told here of real-life experience. I hope you will read and share it. Dementia is a reality for many of us and, unfortunately, promises to be a reality for many more. Truth is our best armor against being cast into despair by the prospect. I hope to add a little to that sustaining truth. Dementia is one of the many ways all of us will evolve from this life into whatever may lay beyond. Passing on is our universal destiny. Some of those passages involve discomfort and unpleasantness. We can perhaps be a bit better prepared if we understand realistically what to expect.
That is what our story – Jonathan’s and mine – is meant to do. Help others – in an honest and caring fashion – to be prepared. Love and Blessings. Alice