Lingering in January

January has been a slow month, but not in a bad way. I spend a lot of time wishing time would just slow down, for goodness's sake, and this month I've gotten my wish: long lazy weekends of reading classic books, sewing tiny hexagons together by hand, baking cakes, watching old movies with the kids, taking long walks in the snow. Weekday mornings are still a hurried and harried mess of running late and forgetting things, and the evenings are sometimes overbooked, but I've taken to spending my lunch break combing the local thrift store for Fiestaware (and having some success), and we've found a show that all of us at home enjoy, which means we have an hour of family togetherness before bed each night, 1980s-style, all eight eyes focused on the same screen.

My word for 2020 is move. Maybe not the most glamorous choice, but having felt stagnant in my writing life in 2019, I need forward motion, momentum, and all the movement words. I also like how it has both a figurative and literal meaning: I can move toward my goals, and I can literally get up and move my body. When I feel stuck, I ask myself what can I do to embody movement: send in a submission, type up some notes, craft a newsletter. Sometimes I need to take a walk or put a Duran Duran karaoke song on and dance around the living room or take a belly dancing class. When in doubt, move about.

I've also made a 20 For 2020 list a la Gretchen Rubin. It's a wide-ranging lists with some old favorites (like upload photos and make into albums and organize basement--although this time I've broken that daunting task into chunks and already completed one of them)--some discrete and doable tasks (finish knitting project), an ambitious target (100 submissions), and one goal outside of my control (sell manuscript). I'm a lists and goals person, so the 20 for 2020 works for me--and 20 is a good number, both ambitious and restraining at once. I'll keep you posted here or on the blog as I tick items off.

In the meantime, I'm enjoying the lingering feeling as January unwinds into its last week, and I hope this sensation of slowed time carries through the year (though maybe not in March; March is too long already).

This post went out last week to subscribers of my newsletter, along with some bonus material. You can subscribe here.

Finish it Friday ~ NA-SO-WRIMO

Last month I set out to conduct my own version of NANOWRIMO (National Novel Writing Month), which I called National Something Writing Month. My goal: to type up at least 1667 words every day from old journals to generate material for a few essay and memoir projects I'm working on.

I get a sticker on the calender when I reach my writing goal for the day—
sadly I ran out of autumnal stickers, but I got a lot of high fives!

And I came oh so very close—I wrote the minimum on all but three days of the month (including Thanksgiving!!). Two of those days I had all-day meetings followed by evening activities and the other one we had out-of-town guests staying with us. I totaled 46,767 words (the goal of NANO is 50,000) and I got through eight journals (only about 17 left to go!). True, they were mostly not new words (except for some editing/enhancing that took place as I typed), but they were words that needed to get out of my handwriting and into the computer, so I call that a win.

It's also the most consistent I've been about working on a writing project in a very long time, probably since writing The Book, although I didn't track either my time or my words then, so I know neither how how quickly or how often I worked (I do recall some days when I went hiking or got caught in the downward email spiral, and I think I mostly didn't work on weekends).

I discovered that I can type already-written words while a lot of other activity is going on around me—people talking, the TV on, etc, which was truly what made getting so many words possible (new words, that require a fair amount of quiet contemplation, would be much more difficult). I may employ this as a strategy in the future—doing my thinking and writing on paper and typing up later while watching Friends or Supergirl with the kids. My plan is to keep going through December with daily writing/typing, but with a lower word count goal of 1000, now that I'm back to work all day. Wish me luck!

I Did It! ~ 2015

Another year has galloped by and it's time for the annual  I Did It! list (hat tip to Lisa Romeo).

Writing I Did Its!

I wasn't feeling the love writing-wise in 2015. Too many ideas, too little time. But let's take a look and see if I accomplished anything:

      Submissions: 8

      Rejections: 6

      Acceptances: 1

      Publications: 4

  

This is supposed to be a positive post, so I'm not going to make any comment on those numbers. The one publication was my first post-MFA published fiction piece, so yea for that! Plus three short pieces published on other blogs:

       Write in Your Car, Literary Mama, August 3, 2015 

       The Twins and The Pendulum, Brain, Mother Blog, February 2015 

       Two Takes on AWP, Literary Mama Blog, February 2015

I completed a small book of short essays and illustrations about a nearby natural area for my naturalist class, a book I hope will be printed and made available in 2016.

I've also continued to volunteer as an editor at Literary Mama, which has been such a fun, rewarding thing to do. I love helping writers bring out the best in their essays.

Finally, I taught three nature writing and nature journaling workshops, with more scheduled for this year. These have gone really well and I'm looking forward to the next round.

Throughout the year I also exchanged work with an email-based nature-writing group, which has been just fabulous. I've generated a lot of material--stuff that now could use revising and submitting--and learned a lot both from my fellow writers' comments on my work and from reading their work.

And, finally, I wrote 116 blog posts and my blog turned eight!

Other Life I Did-Its!

Of course life isn't all about writing, and I accomplished a few things elsewhere in life:

Travel--We sent on a road trip to Colorado with three kids in a 21-year-old black Volvo with no A/C or cruise control. And it was awesome!!

Nature--I completed the training to become a Maine Master Naturalist (the booklet I mention above was part of this program) and started my volunteer work (nature writing and journaling classes I also mention above).

Craft--I didn't have a super crafty year, but I did make a sleeping bag, which is a little kooky. I also planned to knit one thing a month all year and managed to knit a total of nine items, which is pretty darn close. And I needle-felted a bunch of gnomes for Christmas.

So that's that! Another year gone by and time to look forward to the next, think about goals, and make plans for 2016's list.

Do you keep an I Did It! list? How do you celebrate your accomplishments and stay positive in the face of slow progress? 

2015

I finally had some time earlier this week to sit down and think about what I want to accomplish in the year ahead (apparently resolutions are out and intentions, plans, words, and feelings are in. It all amounts to the same thing, though, doesn't it? Reflecting on the year past and investing your hopes and dreams and desires into the one ahead.)

Why, yes, our Christmas stockings are still hanging up. You never know when Santa might swing by for a follow-up visit.

I finally ran out of time--but not resolutions--once I had filled three pages (three 8 1/2 x 11 tablet pages). My goals ranged from the prosaic--clean out the basement, catch up on photo albums, get a handle on my computer storage issues--to the pie in the sky--big travel and book-writing plans. There are crafty plans on the list--quilts for E and Z (with no illusion that they will get done this year...just progress) and knitting up all my stash. There are healthy plans (exercise more; eat less...but not until I finish off the eggnog). There are cooking plans. There are goals for improving my photography skills and ideas about drawing. There are lots and lots writing intentions. I ran out of time before I got to personal growth goals, but I'll get to them soon.

It's a long list. A bit overwhelming. I haven't had time to break the items down into manageable chunks, with timeframes and deadlines, and mini goals along the way, not to mention strategies for overcoming obstacles. For now I'll face it--and life--one day at a time. Or, as it were, one weekend at a time. Here are my plans for this weekend:

NEED to do

Take down the Christmas tree and decorations (I know, I know, I know)
Write and send thank-you notes 

The usual housework

Dissect an owl pellet (for reals...it's homework)

Catch up on winter weed homework

WANT to do

Get started on a couple of essays that are floating around in my mind.

Finish making a cover for a couch pillow that I started ages ago.

Knit while watching MI5

Read

Hike down to the river

Make tamales with a friend

Get started on my capstone project 

Sounds like a three-day weekend is in order (E and Z have been hoping for a school- and work-cancelling blizzard with such fervor, it just might happen). 

Do you make resolutions--or goals, plans, intentions, words, feelings--for the new year?

The Next BIG Thing

My cyber-friend, the lovely Katherine Barret, Literary Mama editor and columnist and amazing international mama (Nova Scotia via South Africa), tagged me to write about my next BIG thing. I didn't pause at the New Year to take stock of the last year or set goals for the next, so I'm going to use this BIG thing meme to do just that, at least in the writing department.

First, I want to start with an "I did it" list, in the tradition Lisa Romeo. Working on my MFA for the last year has been a BIG thing for me: monthly reading and writing deadlines, workshops endured and presentations attended. Last year I wrote 331 pages (yes, I have a spreadsheet); 163 of those were new fiction (the rest being revisions, annotations and essays). I never would have believed myself capable of such productivity, so I just want to say "yea!" for that!

Now, this year's BIG things:

1) I've just started my third semester project, for which I'm writing a long craft/literary theory essay on fiction, poetry and nonfiction by women who write about the themes of motherhood and nature in the same work. I've been really excited about this project and have been amassing books for a while. I've torn through three of them already.

2) For my fourth, and last, semester, I'll be taking those 163 pages of fiction, picking out which merit further work, revising them and fitting them together into a cohesive unit for my thesis. I attended a presentation on linked short stories during residency and ever since I've been reveling in all the ways I could link my stories. I'm especially excited to get to work on the two pieces I workshopped this residency. I have so many ideas regarding setting, character and point-of-view after all of the discussions I can't wait to put them onto the page. 

After that, I've got ideas for an anthology and will get to work sending out the short stories in my thesis, but that's the next, next big thing. 

Now, to tell you about their next BIG things, I'm tagging:

Mariah at Lone Star Ma

Jenna at Stirrings and Stories

Rachel at The Slow-Cooked Sentence

Kristen at Motherese