One Rich Life
Mom and Me, 1942.
Welcome to my new home. Please make yourself comfortable and read the first chapter of the memoir I’m working on,”Me, Myself and Mom, A Journey Through Love, Hate, and Healing.”
I hope you enjoy it and will come back to visit soon.
Joan
Good news! My new website is getting closer to being finished and my memoir progresses. Once my website is up, you’ll find out the title of my book and get to read Chapter One. Hopefully you’ll get a hint of what I’ve been up to and perhaps you’ll give me a push now and then, because you just can’t wait to read the rest.
I still struggle with time management, but I’ve come up with a new idea for my Sacred Writing Time, and so far it’s working perfectly. Sunday through Thursday I’m out of bed by 6:30 AM. I walk the dogs, have breakfast and get some exercise … either more outdoor walking time or on my cross trainer. Hopefully I’m done with that by 9 AM. Then I write until noon. There is no messing around on the Internet with twitter, Facebook, or email during that time.
I’m always trying to find new ways of staying on target because sooner or later something happens and I let it all go. I’m hoping that this time it will last longer and keep me going until it’s done.
Should you insist on coming to visit on those mornings, you’ll most likely come upon a sweaty, smelly me, not really wanting to see you until after I’ve taken my shower and brushed my teeth properly … sometime after lunch. Of course there will be exceptions … emergency visits to doctors or veterinarians or maybe a visitation with someone I adore and haven’t seen in a gazillion years. All else gets put off until the afternoon and early evening hours.
Part of me wants to rebel; afraid it might miss something. It isn’t easy to keep my inner brat from trying to make trouble, but I’m serious about getting my book written and published. I feel great when I’m writing, and at the end of the day, my level of satisfaction for my work and myself goes way up on the charts if I stay on track. I feel as though I’ve accomplished something and I can relax, do something wild and crazy.
When I recently took ten days off from posting on my blog, I got an amazing amount of stuff done. I even found myself not checking email, Facebook, or Twitter as often as I had been. I took time to take better care of myself and spent a bit more time preparing good, healthy food, and to read books that don’t necessarily have anything to do with writing, self-publishing or book promotion.
So as a way to give myself a bit more lee-way, starting next week, I’ll only be posting on my blog once a week, on Wednesdays. That way I won’t get overwhelmed with all I have to do, and you, my readers, won’t get bored reading something that I wasn’t really into, just to keep you entertained.
What are you doing to keep yourself motivated and on target as you work on your creative projects? Do you ever deny yourself time to keep going because you don’t feel like doing the work? Do you have a stack of unfinished projects waiting for you to get back to them?
Grandlings, Zoe and Noah on the Downtown Mall.
I’ve been running into those words often for a couple of days now as I try to get myself back into my daily routine and at work on my memoir. It’s been a crazy couple of weeks in which the routine, the writing, exercise, and getting enough sleep have taken a backseat to other things.
The loss of Brody took a number of days before the waves of grief that overtook me became fewer. During that time I mostly sat and cried, unable concentrate on the simplest of daily activities.
Five days later the annual Virginia Festival of Book started here in Charlottesville, and with it came a visit from a friend whom I’d never before met in person, but with who I knew I had much in common. We’d emailed and made comments back and forth on each other’s blogs and even talked on the phone once. Shirley Showalter of 100 Memoirs was someone I’d stumbled upon on the Internet and it turns out she lives only about two hours away. Her book, Blush, will be in print and on bookstore shelves sometime in the fall. She’d been planning to visit the Festival of the Book and I invited her to stay with me here in my home.
What a wonderful time it was. We went to a few of the festival sessions together and spent hours talking and reading to each other from our memoirs. Way ahead of me on the writing and the publishing angles, she is an inspiration and I know that if she lived any closer I’d often be on her doorstep asking unending questions. When Shirley returned home l was filled with excitement, new ideas and directions for my writing as well as pinpointing publishing options.
For a few days I struggled with catching up on all that I had let slide for a week. The daily rounds of laundry, preparing food for the upcoming Easter weekend and visit from my daughter’s family took up most of my time. Not to be forgotten was taking time to play with our new adoptee, Max, who snuggled his way into our bed and hearts, easing the sadness of Brody’s untimely death. There was little time for writing, except for capturing notes as I remembered things I would change in my memoir, made lists of new books to read, and emailed a few new contacts. I also just needed to sit with myself to bring the roar of excitement to a lower level in which I could think more clearly, keeping myself from being overwhelmed by all that I wasn’t getting done.
Easter weekend was a blast with my Grandlings (read grandchildren) staying with us, sleeping in our basement, “Harry Potter” room, which looks somewhat like a set from the movie. We gifted Lisa and Deena with a stay in a nearby hotel so that they could have a few evenings without the kids. We spent lots of time walking and laughing and on Saturday helped to surprise Mark’s stepdaughter Casey on her 25th birthday with a lovely party. It was the first time in a number of years in which my kids were all here together. We joyfully spent our time celebrating each other. As I grow older occasions like this past weekend become more and more important to me.
Casey blowing out her candles.
We’re all back in the daily grind now, and I can’t help but feel a bit let down. I’ve not felt like writing and last night caught myself thinking that maybe this memoir I’m working on is a waste of time.
I’ve so enjoyed the distractions of friends, parties, great food, laughter and being with my kids, that returning to the serious work of reliving the past and moving through it to healing, seems more painful than usual. The sunshine and the bursting forth of new life is stealing my attention and my need to get my hands into the earth is growing. Words flow onto the page with difficulty and I struggle to make myself sit down and dive back into what was. Time marches on and there are so many things I still want to do.
But I am returning to my work, knowing that it is something I must do, even when it doesn’t feel good. I’ve moved my September 1st deadline for a finished first draft to November 1st, and plan on giving myself a few breaks along the way. We’ re making plans to kidnap Zoe and Noah for a week this summer when we’ll ride the train up to Washington and take in the museums. We’ll also go swimming, read books together, see a silly movie or two and just be with each other.
In the meantime, I’ll not give up working on my story. I love the writing, even when I hate it. I’m growing way beyond the trauma that once made me hide from life. The secret is to integrate the past and the present, stay out in the sunlight, breathe deeply, and enjoy every single moment that comes my way. Time will do as it will.
“Never give up on a dream just because of the time it will take to accomplish it. The time will pass anyway.” Earl Nightingale
“Why is it we understand that playing the cello will require work but we relegate writing to the magic of inspiration? Chances are, any child who stays with an instrument for more than two weeks has some adult who is making her practice, and any child who sticks with it longer than that does so because she understands that practice makes her play better and there is a deep, soul-satisfying pleasure in improvement. If a person of any age picked up the cello for the first time and said, “I’ll be playing in Carnegie hall next month!” you would pity her delusion, but beginning writers all over the country polish up their best efforts and send them off to The New Yorker. Perhaps you’re thinking here that playing an instrument is not an art in itself but an interpretation of the composer’s art, but I stand by my metaphor. The art of writing comes way down the line, as does the art of interpreting Bach. Art stands on the shoulders of craft, which means to get to the art, you must master the craft.
“If you want to write, practice writing. Practice it for hours a day, not to come up with a story you can publish but because you long to write well, because there is something you alone can say. Write the story, learn from it, put it away, write another story. Think of a sink pipe filled with sticky sediment: The only way to get the clean water is to force a small ocean through the tap. Most of us are full up with bad stories, boring stories, self-indulgent stories, searing works of unendurable melodrama. We must get all of them out of our system in order to find the good stories that may or may not exist in the fresh water underneath.
“Does this sound like a lot of work without any guarantee of success? Well yes, but it also calls into question our definition of success. Playing the cello, we’re more likely to realize that the pleasure is the practice, the ability to create this beautiful sound — not to do it as well as Yo-Yo Ma, but still, to touch the hem of the gown that is art itself.”
Ann Patchett, The Getaway Car: A Practical Memoir About Writing and Life.
I am bereft. I cannot possibly write about it now. Maybe later. Just know he was a very small dog with a huge personality and lived his life living with joy until the very end. He taught me many lessons while he was with me.
Brody RIP
March 15, 2013
