Monday Mug 26

This week flew by much like all the weeks in my life lately. So many things have happened since I last checked in with you. There were beautiful things and events that have been very difficult, so sit down with your mug because I have some things to talk about.

The Farm

Things on the farm have been in high gear as it is Spring which seems like a busy time long with Summer. But we had to put improvement projects off because of the constant rains. We did sort cattle, and in the process, I was almost taken out by heifer.

I was safely on the outside fence with a hole in it, but we really didn’t think anyone would try to jump through because the hole was barely big enough for a cat to fit through. Well, we had a pretty wild heifer, and she didn’t like being moved from one pasture to another, so she jumped through the fence right at me. Now I tried to get the cow to go back in the holding pen at first but then realized being trampled by a cow wasn’t worth it that day.  

We also have a calf we call Houdini that keeps escaping in new ways almost daily. I was outside talking on the phone at dusk and saw a calf down in a field it shouldn’t be in. I thought it was our neighbor’s calf. After asking my brother about I realized it was, in fact, our little escape artist. My brother and I walked down to the field and searched for him in the growth around the creek. We looked for about an hour seeing places where he had gone trying to track him from location to location. To no avail, we didn’t find him. 

As we came back up the hill, our homes sit high on top, surround by our cattle. There was Houdini in the field eating grass like everyone else. He is such a trickster. Both of us rolled our eyes and slowly trekked back up the hill. 

The Plants

Yes, I want my plants to have their own section. I have picked up gardening over the last few years. I worked in a garden center for a while, and my mother has always loved plants. It took me quite a few years, though, to get into it myself. 

I have some hanging baskets I planted before mother’s day. I planted marigolds which I’m not too fond of the smell of, but I love the bright yellow and orange. The other baskets have geraniums in them, and I have found geraniums do well in these baskets. 

I still have a lot I need to plant, but I haven’t chosen the flowers I’d like to see this year. If you have suggestions, leave them below. My indoor herbs are doing well. I have lavender, sweet mint, and cilantro. I haven’t done herbs inside previously, but this has been a cool spring, so I thought I would give it a try. 

The Writing

There are so many things to share. I have been attending a writing meeting at least once a week since January it has helped me a lot this year. It is structured and helps ease my mind when listening. 

I have been sharing my very rough free writing with people. This has been something I never thought I would do. I have insecurities like any writer. I recently came across an article about doubt in The Writer magazine. I am also reading Jeff Goins’s book You Are A Writer. 

  The article shared these ideas about why a lot of writers have self-doubt. It was refreshing to see that even professional writers have doubts and deal with different fears that all of those in the field deal with. One of the doubts that stood out was negative feedback can make a writer lose interest in writing. The comparison game was also an aspect talked about in the article. I have been guilty of this in the past until my writer friend started telling me how she would go over a poem or story multiple times to see what jumped out and how it worked. Seeing how a story worked is more productive than envy. 

I have learned Jeff Goins’s book so far is being a writer is all about practice. It is not the first time I have heard this advice. It is the way that people demystify the world of art. Whether this is dance, music, writing, or art, to name a few disciplines, the general conciseness is that many people are thinking that you have to be talented to be a writer. In real life, though, most people have found it is a lot of just practicing and repeatedly writing to improve your skills. I have enjoyed the book so far because he is very straightforward and tells you how it is. I appreciate the honesty. 

Until the next mug, just write. 

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Monday Mug 25

Hello, my writer people! I am so happy to be back. It never seems to fail that my February goes by so quickly each year. This year I lost a couple of weeks to the bitter cold, snow, and ice. There are many things to do on a farm in this type of weather and none of it in a heated area. I am sitting here with my mug of coffee because now it apparently puts me to sleep. (I never saw that one coming.) Though I think this speaks to the lack of sleep in my world lately. 

Something I want to talk about tonight is the things we once used, which might work again. No, I’m not telling you to get back into that lousy relationship, so don’t go there. I am talking about planning. I’m a bit obsessed with planners and all stationary. I had using this daily planner for a couple of years now to keep my stress levels lower. When I saw a day at a time, it was wonderful because I was just focused on that day. It kept me more in my present moment. 

However, I started to put some of my daily tasks off to the next day, not realizing how full the next day was. I realized this year I needed to go back to a weekly planner to make sure I wasn’t overloading myself. A planner I used to love and use often was a passion planner, but I had a couple of bad experiences. I was too picky when it came to size and bleed-through. There was nothing else on the market that would meet my needs, so I got a passion planner this year, and it was amazing! There was no bleed-through with my zebra highlighters. I absolutely love it, and I continue to feel more accomplished!

My writing is going great right now because I am taking the pressure off myself to be perfect. I have decided to come back to the art of playing with writing so my inner child can have some joy again. The scheduled I am on right now is writing every other day for 10 minutes to an hour. The writing I have been doing has been all prompt-based as of late because of the isolation I am still living in. When I was going to the office and out in society daily, many events sparked ideas for me, but I find prompts working for me now. I get these prompt through Instagram and share a lot of what I find on my page. You can find them here. I finished The Artist Way, and I felt so much better as an artist. 

Writing groups I am involved in right now are Story A Day and a Patreon group for Tammy B. In both of these groups, I am learning from other writers and learning about writing in general. Tammy’s group has great education around publishing, being a writer, and fun prompts. Story A Day had conversions about what is going on in the short story world and focused on community. It is nice to be able to answer questions and to ask questions. There is so much knowledge out there, and it is nice to bounce the information off other writers. I would recommend anyone not in a writing group or who doesn’t have writing connections to reach out and find some. 

The big event I am attending this month is going to the AWP Conference virtually. I was so excited about going to this event in person because it was scheduled for my state this year. However, I am even more excited about the virtual option because I won’t miss a word of what is being said. I hope you are having a great year so far, and like always, just keep writing. 

(This blog has affiliate links, and as Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases.)

Who Has Time to Write

I hear myself saying I don’t have a lot of time to write. Yes, my life is crazy busy like everyone else, but so? I say over and over, “there are not enough hours in the day.” I have an endless to-do list just like anyone else. I can’t seem to possibly focus on writing for any amount of time without being interrupted. There are too many people needing things from me to keep me from doing one thing I want to do. 

I’ve been dealing with this problem years before Covid-19 and all the 2020 craziness. I don’t say no often enough because I love helping people and teaching them. A year ago, I started to lose hope. There was one year in there where I struggled to have any hope at all in life. I was frustrated by my lack of motivation and the overwhelming feeling of not getting enough done. 

I started watching YouTube videos about self-care and reading blogs about it. One of those books, videos, or blogs had Mel Robbins in. I honestly didn’t even know who she was until a few years ago. Thank god for the YouTube black hole of information. Robbins is a big believer in morning and night routines. I have never been a person who had either, but I know I like a rhythm throughout my day. There are times I like to work on specific projects. I wanted things to change in my life, and I felt the best way to do this was a night routine.

I have a few minutes before bed for myself. During this time, I hadn’t been doing anything consistently. Sometimes I would read, watch TV, or journal. So I decided to think about the thing I wanted to change the most in my life: writing more often. I hadn’t been consistently writing for a while. The story and book ideas have been there, but no stories were getting on paper. So I set a timer for ten minutes to write. 

I know for the first few weeks, I couldn’t believe how long ten minutes took! I was continually looking at my watch. Soon I realized just how much I was getting done in the 10 minutes. Stories were finally reaching the page, and I was allowing myself to dream again. Dream again of finishing the novel and of getting stories published.

I was starting to create. I found when I was trying to edit; I did it faster the next day. If I allowed the writing to sit for sleep, then I could see my mistakes easier.  If I know I am having a hard day or my night will be longer, I move my 10 minutes up to lunchtime. 

Now I find more often than not; I can get a lot more done by writing, even just a few minutes a day than I was before. I now have a morning routine of walking now. It is a beautiful way to start my day. I even wake up early on the weekends so I can enjoy this quiet morning time. There are days when it rains and storms, but I move the time of my walk or mediate day if I can’t get out. When I was walking, I have found a way for me to clear my mind and move. Meditation allows me also to clear my mind even when I am not able to do everyday movements. 

Instead, on those days, I have a dance party in the living room, turn on com crazy music, and just dance it out. There is nothing better than movement, meditation, and a timer for my writing routine. If you have days, you get stuck its s okay. Talk to a writing friend that day or a writing community. If you have signed up for NaNoWriMo, you can have groups that can talk all year round. Just remember to give yourself 10 minutes. So much can be done in just a little amount of time.

It is so much better than being overwhelmed by everything. 

Just write 10 minutes.

Embrace Yourself Writer

It takes me a little bit to remember what it was like in my world before the internet. Days lasted forever because I was outside, always running, playing, and making up stories. I would spend hours staring outside my window, watching the wind blow through the trees. Now I look at trees in pictures on my phone.  My world revolves around the internet, even my job relies on it. I got caught up recently in the comparison game on social media. I had to tell myself daily,  jealousy isn’t worth it because no one’s life is perfect, and I only see the highlight reel. 

So when I was struggling with the comparison game, I’d come across hundreds of posts, blogs, and videos about loving who you are. With all this time at home lately, I have been overly reflective of my life, and I was considering the following...

How many of us, especially artists, take self-love to heart?

Do you believe people when they say you can dream big dreams? 

When someone compliments our work, does it get through to our hearts? Do we even know how to take a compliment? 

Comparison is one scab I have been picking about often now. This year, in particular, because I have been online more than have been ever, I am comparing myself to everyone out there. 

My social media reads...

He is writing 2500 words every day! 

She just published her first poetry collection! 

They are making thousands of freelancing and off their blogs how! 

These posts would be motivating for some people, but for me, all I am doing is comparing my life to theirs. No, I have no idea what their home life is like or other commitments. I am strictly looking at how much they produce and noticing I am not producing that much. Kindly I remind myself of the writer I am and to go at my own pace in my own time.  I have to tell myself I will work a little every day to chip away at what I am trying to accomplish. 

The next scab I am picking is you don’t know anything. In the grand scheme of the world, it’s true, I know very little. Even when I focus on writing alone, I am sure I have only skimmed the surface. I feel this way because I have a degree in creative writing.  

Have you been to a university library where there are floors and floors of books? 

There are millions of blogs posted daily as well.

How could I ever consume that much information? 

Only an AI could read all of the material being put out there now.  Again gently, I realize in my own life, I am an expert when it comes to my struggles with writing and getting in my own way.

The last scab I have been picking is that no one will read this or give a crap. There is some truth to that statement.  Many will read this blog and never click on my site again.  I know I am not alone because we all go through times where we question what we are producing. 

However,  I have to remember the one. The one is the person we all write for, but sometimes we forget about them. They are the ones that will say yeah me too. I have been there, or I am there right now. And even if they don’t get anything else out of this, they will know they are not alone fighting to be a writer. 

It is easy to get lost in all of these mindsets as a writer, but I’m going to ask you to fight them as I do. 

    Your story really matters, write it.  

Your creative mind matters, be kind.

Your writing could save one person from loneliness. 

We were not all made to write 2500 words a day, or publish our book tomorrow. That is okay. No, really, it is okay. 

Be the writer you were made to be.  

I’m calling out to you struggling writers be kind to yourself because we still need you. 

We really need you.

Stop self-loathing for wasting so much time. 

Give yourself a break, wake up tomorrow with new hope, and try the next day again if it all goes to crap. 

Start with 5 minutes and then work your way to 10 minutes. 

Give yourself 10 minutes of self-care in one day. 

Accept who you are as a writer and allow yourself to be that writer, not the one you think you should be.

In the meantime, let it all go and just write.