Refuge

One good thing about music, when it hits you, you feel no pain.  Bob Marley

When I was in elementary school, I played flute, but I never practiced. I played passingly and usually sat towards the end of the section because I didn’t put the effort into improving my musical skills.

The interesting thing about music or art versus writing is that often there is the idea that writers are born and not made. However, writing is a skill like any other, and to develop any skill that means you need to practice.

I’ve been working on my writing practice this year. I’ve been writing towards a novel since late January and am at sixty-two thousand words. I’m happy with my progress. When it comes to my writing, I want to practice. I want to get better.

When I write, I am a happier and more complete person than when I do not write. For example, yesterday, I was in a funky mood. A bit anxious and upset and I sat down to write and just lost myself to my characters. And when I finished, I felt better. I even went on to write more in a second session later last night.

Writing is my refuge from the world. When I am telling stories it takes me away from my problems and issues. It allows me the freedom to bring my characters to life and to share them with others.

©K. Klein 2013

Energy & personal limits

I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.  Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it’s a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope.  Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life’s realities.  ~Theodore Geisel

I’ve been running into my personal limits lately. I looked at the last time I updated my blog and cringed. However, I need to remind myself that I only have so much energy and so much time to do everything. There are only twenty-four hours in a day. And only seven days in a week. Even Martha Stewart (or insert your mogul of choice) has to deal with those constraints.

From what I can tell, Martha Stewart doesn’t sleep – maybe she a super secret new type of vampire? A homemaking vampire that is my bet. Now the question is, what do these new vampires eat? Blood seems to messy for the perfect homemaking vampire. Oh well, that isn’t my point.

Further, I need to cut myself some slack, I am drafting a novel. I recently hit 45k in the draft. I’ve been going strong since Jan. 28^th. That is a big deal. So mostly, the words I might have used in this blog have gone to the novel.

However, it isn’t just writing limits I’m noticing. For me, I have a pretty set amount of energy in which to accomplish things. For example, my introverted nature means that social interactions take more chunks out of my energy than cleaning the bathroom or doing the laundry.

An interesting thing I’ve hit upon in my own limits of energy is that my social interaction energy pool overlaps with my writing energy pool. If I have a big day planned on the weekend, likely, I won’t have energy to write afterwards. Or I’ll prefer not to write beforehand and conserve myself for seeing my friends and family. This has hampered my write seven days a week goal. I am pretty happy writing six days a week.

Every writer is different. And the idea of telling writers to write everyday is that writers need to practice. My whole 2013 goal was to practice, practice, practice. And I’m overall happy with my progress. I honestly wish I could write a bit faster. But considering that I only write in chunks of time as little as a half an hour to as much as two hours a day I’m doing all right. I’m super proud of the day I wrote 4k, but I also devoted 5+ hours to that. So, time is a constraint. And practice will help me to not only improve my writing, but also help me focus, and writer faster.

Half of my slowness problem now is sitting down and concentrating on what I want to write now. Rather than doing half a dozen other things. Sometimes I have “oh shiny” moments and they come at the time I am trying to sit down and write. So the strategy is to get the water, tea, and snack before I sit down to write – instead of trying to write and then getting up every five minutes. I also have started logging out of social media so that I don’t have the temptation to check Facebook or the interwebs every two minutes.

Now that I’m aware of what makes me lose concentration, I can do those small things to help keep me focused when I sit down to write. And hopefully that means writing more words. Yay.

©K. Klein 2013