Monday's Mug 023

Hello, Writers of the World. 

Welcome back to Monday’s Mug! I always love to be drinking from my mugs daily, but Monday is the day I like to catch you up on what has been happening since we last talked. Tonight I am drinking hot raspberry tea. I have enjoyed the cold chill in the air lately. Things have been pretty peaceful this last week, but I will share about my quiet week. 

While we sip from our mugs, I would tell you I had been experimenting with soups lately. I love soup and made taco soup for the first time ever. I can’t handle many spicy foods, so it was the perfect opportunity to make it to my family’s taste. A wonderful mom that became a friend over soccer practices this year shared the recipe with me. While on this subject of food, I made pumpkin bread and cupcakes this last weekend for our treats. I watch The Great British Baking Show and enjoy baking as well as learning about it.  

While we sip from our mugs, I would share with you my Artist Way progress. Morning pages are becoming more of a priority for my life. While I have been handwriting them for the last two months, I will be typing them in November. I have been pushing to make my writing more of a priority. Writing is essential to me than I realized, and being a writer is far more important to me as well. Through my morning pages, I have worked through some religious beliefs and political frustrations. These pages allow me to vent and get everything off my mind to start my days fresh. Due to our recent time change, I am waking up earlier to do writing in the morning. I never thought this would be possible for me because usually, I am a late-night writer. While my creativity does still peak in the evening, I find the morning time great to relax and get my writing groove on. 

Would you like to refill your mug? 

While we sip from our mugs, I would tell you I have been thinking a lot more about my writing, in general, this week. I was able to be part of a sprint this last week. It was only 30 minutes of writing, but I can accomplish my goals last week by getting that 30 minutes in. I have also decided to do NaNoWriMo this year. While this has been a more challenging year for my writing, I finally feel like I understand what I am doing. I think I am seeking out the creative life I have been looking for and encouraging friends to thank for it. This is a way a writing community can change your life. This is how your life changes because you let people in and allow them to speak life into your problems.

Just keep writing. 

Monday's Mug 013

Welcome to another Monday’s Mug. There were a lot of things in my life happening this last week. I will be settling in with a nice hot cup of tea because I’m minimizing my coffee intake. Can I get something for you? The weather has been fickle around here with its up and down temperatures. It is raining in the morning and snowing at night. I felt I was a lot like the weather this last week in my productivity.

I few new things for 2020 I am doing are night pages every evening before bed on the 4thewords.com. If you don’t know about this website, it is for writers, and you can try it free for 30 days to see if you do like it.  I get in some writing for the day, and some days I do prompts instead. I call mine night pages, and I know I am not going by the rules of Morning pages in The Artist Way, but writing my pages at night on a computer at this point is what works for me.  I love the idea of doing a written journal, but I have yet to keep up with journals. 4thewords gives me incentives because I get to fight monsters and go on quests. It is not all about the game, though, and is more focused on writing than I expected. The way you defeat monsters is by writing I find this very fitting. Writing is the way I beat some of life’s monsters as well. 

I had a terrible Monday my dog of 17 years died. She had been going downhill for a while, but she finally gave up Monday. She had been such a huge part of my life through some very dark times. She was my friend and sometimes the only “person” I talked to for long stretches of my life. This might seem strange to you, but I have to say that is one thing that living in the country has always provided for me is a vivid imagination. I have talked to animals my whole life because there were no neighbor kids to hang out with. We grew up on a dairy farm, and it takes a lot of work. There were no times when we were able to leave and take vacations. The cows needed us every day twice a day. It was fun, but I have to say that my imagination and stories were being created long before I ever knew how to write any of them down.

Would you like some more to drink? 

Last week was also the first contest I have ever entered for writing. I was scared, no doubt, but after being with the Story A Day SuperStars for a couple years now, some of the fears I never thought I even had I’m realizing are fading away. I had submitted some of my work in the past, but nothing ever came of it. I was concerned at times with never being good enough. I was taking my world of writing way too seriously. 

In this last year, especially when I have felt like I have been treading water. I have been moving forward with my ability to deal with criticism. The rejection was something that terrified me, but now I am looking forward to being rejected because at least I know I am no longer in my own way, and I doing it. I am fulfilling my dream of being a published writer. I know I will be accepted one day. I have been working on my craft and I am devoting time daily to my art. 

I will talk a little more about the contest later this week, but in the middle of the contest, my family got sick. I had to be miss work a couple of days. I was trying to care for others while I was ill myself, and it was not good at all. It was a tough few days. So during that time, I wasn’t really focused on the short story contest at hand, and it was tough to get back into that frame of mind. I was happy my Story A Day group was there to support me, and one of them was doing the contest as well. We both really want to propel ourselves out into the writing world again. 

I have to go for now but remember to just write.