January 22, 2005
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The puppy somehow managed to break the dog door so my brother installed a new one today. The other thing I checked off my to-do list was getting the Christmas lights down. It always amazes me how much time I spend feeling bad about not doing a chore that takes minutes to accomplish.
I am doing well on my New Year’s resolutions. Someone on here — And maybe I have mentioned this already – introduced a new concept for me. I now have categories that I am working toward. It’s not so much a specific goal as it is a category with a five-year plan. I tend to be an all-or-nothing type so this is healthier and easier to achieve success with.
But what is lacking is a more specific checklist. Like: 1. pay bills. I am amazed by my cavalier approach this month. Usually I am wracked with guilt if I haven’t at least gotten them all out, discarding the ones that weren’t really bills. This should happen by the 10th the second sitting will result in a nice neat pile, ready to go except the stamps. And then it’s just a matter of finding the stamps and driving to the post office (I’m too paranoid to leave them in the mail box). This process always happens by the 14th. And I felt really bad about myself on the 15th and worse on the 16th but by the 18th I’d let it go.
You know what it is, it’s the writing. At night, all I want to do is write. And it’s never what I’m supposed to be writing, like the book or my assignment. It’s my blog. The blogging has gotten out of hand. I used to think it was because I wanted more comments but even when I wasn’t getting many comments, like lately, I still poured my heart into it. And every morning I’d come to the computer to see if you’d liked what I’d done and maybe there would only be two of you who said anything, but you were always kind and you seemed to approve. And I knew I was getting better, I could see it. And so with a self-satisfied smile I would read myself again. That’s what it is. I just figured it out. It’s an ego thing.
See, I started back on the book today, and it just wasn’t as good as it used to be. Because what I’ve been doing on my blog lately is finishing up stuff that I knew what to do with. I was intimate with it. My book on the other hand, I am not feeling intimate about. I have left the characters too long and now they are strangers to me. That’s the danger of blogging. And I am going to rectify that. No more blogging until I have written 1000 words.
I see the difference now between working on new stuff and old stuff. I like detail work so I’d much rather be perfecting sentences than brainstorming, trying to find those sentences. Maybe everybody’s like that. I wish we could have another Nanowrimo. I never realized how wonderful it was to have a big push like that. Maybe we could start our own! I sure miss watching that bar fill up; checking in every day with my progress. It seems like a lot of you are working on books. Anybody got ideas about how we could support each other, push each other, be held accountable publicly?
Comments (9)
why does xanga affect the ego so much
is it the comments?
I have several subs that just post…no comments allowed
I have often said I will try this..but i have not
I would stay up as late as I could…waiting for your post…
I was once a comment whore. I would go to other peoples sites to leave comments in the hopes of garnering comments in return. I would try different formats to see what would get people to comment. There were days a while back when i would get enough comments to get featured on Xanga. but I stopped the whoring. I now write what I want to write. Subscribers come and go, some comment, others don’t. what i do now is make sure that what I write is meaningful to me. That, in the long run, will stay with me for a while; not the number of comments.
writing is a lonely sport… one in which the audience is seldom seen… self-discipline is critical and i’m working on that! i have ppl who hold me accountable for the tasks i need to accomplish… but, there’s something to be said for leaving a work and coming back to it…. you see it with fresh eyes- its mistakes are glaring and the good parts shine. i think you’re doing fine- you’re practicing here! you’re writing every day. it’s not the amount of words you accomplish in a day- bc for me real writing happens in the editing process- so while i can write 1,000 words a day, when i edit, i may add a hundred or delete a hundred in a day but it makes the piece work…. that’s the problem i have with nano for me- it make me focus on the numbers and not the quality (i understand its purpose and even agree with it) but for me, it didn’t work.
I sort of left my response to this post in the previous comment box – about writing and xanga. I do think some of what I ponder about aloud on my blog is done to hold me accountable. I feel exposed when I write blogs like that rather than stories, I always end up feeling needy and regreting those blogs, and yet even that feeling reminds me of what I hoped. If I just put it on paper it would be forgotten and easy to ignore.
I think one of Nano’s appeals is that everyone has exactly the same goal – not like weight watchers or something where one person has 100 pounds to lose and another has 15. It would be hard to work out a way to remember exactly each of our goals and mark our progress since they are each so different, yet I do think that just the act of announcing our writing goals here and others reading than acknowledging them is a support system in a way, isn’t it? I just love reading about how other people write and talking about it. Makes it feel less lonely (in response to jerjonji’s comment.) In my daily life nobody writes, so they are supportive but vague and I hear remarks like, “All good writers are drunks or insane.” Which is somehow less than encouraging, as I hope that I am neither.
I am still waiting for my mom to finish reading my NaNo submission…she paused to gather and publish a book of poems. *smile* I relished NaNo…not counting the two days I intentionally didn’t write, I did the thing in 11 days. It was fun, but I know the big deal is actually doing something with it…once I’ve decided (based on the opinions of a few people I happen to admire) to move forward, I have the awful job of editting (which I hope boils down to a few spelling corrections and chapter-dividing LOL).
Like with my new eating habits and weight loss…I have my goals and post my progress. I love the yippees I get. If you need someone to push you, I can, and I’ll be honest. Do you have a thousand word a day limit? That’s a good one. Me, I’m just waiting for my book to come back…hehehe…
Peace and Love…GFW
I’m curious about the categories for your goals and resolutions. Also, yes, the blogging thing both gets in the way of and encouarges the writing somehow. I guess, as with other things, it’s “all in moderation.” I sometimes blog as a means of avoiding real work once I’m up in my office. And then I have a “real” (as in handwritten) journal as well, which I try to keep up, and it seems I only have so much writing in me. If I email my friends and family, blog, write all day for money, journal, and try to write a real letter now and then my day and night has suddenly become full of pressure. There’s that feeling of writing the same thing over and over, albeit from different perspectives. And sometimes it leave no room for doing things…or I use the writing as an excuse for not doing things.
I know exactly what you mean- and what I think is we should form our own writer’s group within our Xanga community and post our first drafts of our novels as we are writing them – I know I do a lot of editing for a blog entry, and would put that into a post that was part of my *nano novel* – whatever feedback would be great too. Only I wouldn’t want to be doing that for the general community, so it would mean keeping *2* blogs, wouldn’t it – but, hey, we are working on our stuff while blogging, maybe have a site that is *protected* and one that is *public* – so that we can have the best of both worlds! Then, Pru, you start posting your novel to a small group of us who are also writing longer term projects like that, etc., and maybe, maybe we can get the magic of the blog to help us finish and edit our novels too! Let me know what you think…
wishing you a most happy sunday…
I *smile*
I joined xanga with the specific purpose of finishing my life story because it had literally taken me over 10 years to write 5 chapters. I spend about 3 months researching a chapter and during that time just keep my blog going with comments on other things – books, movies, politics, etc. Then when I’m done writing it, I blog it and simply soak up the sense of it being read by others who are also trying to write. Because an autobiography is so personal, sometimes I get to feeling really vulnerable, like I should stop and hide again. Then I think, no, I had this goal and unless I receive really major negative feedback I’m going to try to persist. I’m not sure I would do well with an actual deadline, but xanga gives me enough of a deadline to feel comfortable just by knowing that others know I’m trying. Hang in there.