Yep, me too. I’m headed over to Substack. I will leave all this content here. Over there, I will make new posts and curate some of the best of the old stuff. As always, with a mind to inspire your writing.
Some past posts to keep you making time:
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
Last weekend, we drove to Montana for the weekend. We are two high school teachers whose kids are all grown up now. This year we’re being intentional about trying to insert some get-aways throughout the school year. This was our first one. The whole idea is a bit impulsive, indulgent, and even a little risky. To leave school on a Thursday at 4, take that Friday off, and drive through the night to arrive at our rental cottage in the town of Hot Springs at three in the morning. The weekend was wonderful, but that’s not what I want to talk about here. What I want to talk about is the unexpected afterglow and its impact on my creative process.
I’ve been stuck in my writing. Feeling indecisive. Constantly working away at editing the same two books that at this point I can’t figure out why I wrote anyway. Believing that if I just approach it from a new angle, and edit that chapter one more time, I’ll be able to bring some life back into the projects. Not wanting to waste all that time I spent writing those thousands and thousands of words.
How many times have I written on this blog that I’m here for the joy of writing?
And yet here I am toiling away, not wanting to waste anything.
The morning after we returned from Montana, the decisions were suddenly so easy. Start the new book that has been simmering on the back burner for almost two years now, that is the one you think about and care about now. Let go of any questions about what will happen to those other books or whether anything will happen at all. Write more poetry, dammit. How long has it been since you let a flash storm of words through you onto the page? Remember where you started. Remember how you lifted one poem at a time into this love of words, this word realm where you can get at the deeper, wordless parts of you. A paradox.
Creative friends, this work demands structure and commitment, for sure. But is also demands risk, indulgence—impulsivity. Keeping these aspects in balance is a constant practice that thankfully we don’t have to do entirely alone.
Interested in hiring me as a coach to get you boosted with your writing goals? Find free resources and information here.
Some past posts to keep you making time:
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
I’ve got a stretch of days with extra solitude. Chris is in New York geeking out over baseball and making memories with his siblings. Of course, I’ve turned it into a stay home writing retreat. After all, I am trying to meet a deadline, it’s summer, and this summer in particular creativity is my theme, my experiment, and the garden I’m growing this year.
I woke up this morning and poured about an hour of my time down the digital drain. But then I kicked myself in the ass and set a timer. Setting a timer to focus on just one thing for a set amount of time works for me. It’s a damn miracle, to be honest. It seems to kick invoke the little kid in me who showed up with everything she had when the teacher set the timer for a page of math equations or paragraphs to read. Oh, hell yes. Do you doubt me? Set that timer and watch me go.
Once I set the timer then I was in it. I stayed in it until it was time for yoga class, though it did get hard a few times when my mind landed on that old track that never has anything nice to say and wastes all her juice worrying about what other people will think.
Our yoga teacher invited us to “create space for ourselves” and described what setting a boundary looks like: “If I experience X, I will do Y”. Always need that reminder. For reals. You have to practice that shit all the time, and if you don’t use it, you lose it. Getting good at setting boundaries is not only good for you. It’s good for the people you take care of in your life too. That’s one thing I try to remember when I need to set a difficult boundary. Boundaries are an act of love and service to others. They give others permission to do the same. They make space for other people to do the work, solve problems, and take action.
I was so grateful for this nugget offered mid-retreat today. When doubts about the worthiness of my story come up, I will keep writing. If I worry about the structure, I will keep writing. If I fall into contemplation of the publishing industry as it is, I will keep writing. For today, I will keep writing like I’ve got something to prove that is even more important than proving that I’ve mastered math facts.
More retreat time tomorrow and the next day, with the goal of finishing a new draft of a novel I’ve been working on off and on for almost a decade. This summer is about tying up loose ends so that I can start a fresh book in the fall. Whatever it is you are working on, I am here for you. Let’s make time.
Interested in hiring me as a coach to get you boosted with your writing goals? Find free resources and information here.
Some past posts to keep you making time:
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
Dear, dear creative friends,
It’s been too long. I am writing to let you know I am still here making time. The need is more urgent than ever, because in spite of how you might think it should be (teacher in summer and all that), all this loose time can be hard to tame. And this summer I am desperate to get some writing done.
It’s been all I can do these past many months to keep a small trickle of words flowing through my creative faucet. The balance of creative impulse and creative flow has been out of whack and this sense of futility had started to creep in. You know the one. How does anyone ever write a book anyway? It’s not like you’ll ever make much money from all this work and you already have a job that covers what you need. Imagine all that time you’d have to read books and watch TV if you just gave up this whole writing charade. You all probably know what a load of crap that is. The practice of writing is the reward, there is an impulse to write that is an integral part of who you are. You do it because you love it because through the process you become a better, more compassionate version of you.
But I didn’t give up, and as soon as summer appeared on the horizon, I made a plan. There was no way I was going to pass through this summer with a sparkling clean house, a weeded garden, and barely any progress on my novel. Oh, hell no, as my good friend Carrie would say.
What’s the plan?
It’s so simple.
And it is working!
Each day from wake up to noon? Creative time.
No phone. No chores. Not even loading the dishwasher or anything else I tell myself I can do real quick. I do make coffee and walk the dogs, but then it is time to write. I have a small accountability group I check in with daily. So far this week I’ve edited seven chapters and gotten back to practicing guitar.
As luck would have it, There is often a yoga class offered at noon at my studio. I’ve been walking over there after my focused work and letting my yoga practice be my bridge back into the day-to-day work of householding.
My hope is to have a new draft of my novel by the end of July. Are you making time this summer? What are you working at?
Hubby is trying to get some songs recorded, so we’ve agreed to help each other prioritize creativity first every day.
Interested in hiring me as a coach to get you boosted with your writing goals? Find free resources and information here.
Some past posts to keep you making time:
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
Still riding a yoga high from an early morning yoga class, on my walk to work this morning, this blog post landed on me. A few things that were said/moments I experienced over the last week or so came together and clicked for me. That feeling, at that moment, may be the closest I’ll ever get to my fantasy of being able to stop time and move around in it like Evie in Out of this World.
The thing that clicked for me has everything to do with the theme of this blog–Make Time. What I realized is that “busyness” is relative and time as we know it does not exist.
Let me explain. I am in my third week of yoga teacher training (which adds up to at least 20 hours a weekend, sometimes more). I’m working on renewal of my National Boards certification for teaching. I’m teaching full-time. I’m helping a talented woman get her stories out and into the world by editing and designing her book. Plus a few other things on the side. I’m guessing you’re thinking right now that I sound “busy”, and that I don’t have time. I’ve certainly been in spots like this where I felt that too. Not this time.
“Busyness” is getting flayed a bit by wellness culture right now. A problem is: we define “busyness” by the number of things we fill our schedules with or have on our to-do lists. From what I can tell “busyness” is a state of mind. If I try to hold things in the future in my mind, I am busy. If I can stay present in the moment and do one thing at a time, I can pack a day to the brim and never feel busy at all. This will require a few things: practice, trust, and an open mind. Our minds run on the tracks we’ve laid out for them through repetition, so staying present will take practice. It may also require you to get your phone habits in check., because our devices are creating terrible habits of mind on top of everything else. Be patient and practice. Trust plays a role here. To be present, we need to trust that the future will arrive and that we will be present for it. What about an open mind? Well, it may turn out that on that list of thirty things you’re simultaneously thinking about doing, a third of them may never happen. A lot of “busy” people actually aren’t doing much at all. They are too paralyzed by how busy everything is.
And then there is time. Our most precious resource, right? Yet, ironically, the more we think about how limited time is and try to hold it fast, the faster it goes and the less of it we have. In one sense, these past few weeks I’ve had less time. However, since so much of that time has been spent developing a mindfulness practice, I do not feel short on time. In fact, I feel sort of amazed at how much more time I have than I thought. My days are more packed for sure, but I feel as though I am moving in slow motion when I’m really in it. I’m certainly not thinking about not having time.
We make time by staying present for the moment we’re in and letting go of our obsession with how limited time is. It is limited, of course. And no one knows just how much time they have. That’s the paradox. To savor the time we have, we need to trust and be. And you don’t need to be an alien from another planet like Evie to have her superpowers.
Interested in hiring me as a coach to get you boosted with your writing goals? Find free resources and information here.
Some past posts to keep you making time:
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
Last week, I finished a collection of stories I’ve been working on for twelve maybe thirteen years. I have memories of a retreat I went on with a writer friend somewhere along the way where I mapped out all the stories and their interconnections using overlapping circles and colored markers. This friend took a picture of me lying belly down on the deck of the cabin where we were staying. I look happy in the picture. I had finished the task of planning. That was twelve years ago.
I came across that diagram the other day when I was cleaning out my file cabinet. Reviewing it’s contents, I had to laugh. So much had changed! The story hadn’t gone at all the way I thought it would. Characters names had changed. The order of stories and their titles too were unrecognizable to me. The seed idea was sort of the same, but even that had evolved to be something more specific than I had started with.
As I was writing the last story in the collection, an insight came up for me that I’d had before. One of those lessons as a writer or a practicer of anything that we have to learn over and over. It is of course the goal of writing to some day finish. And by finish I mean feel satisfied that you’ve done all you can with a piece, that it really is time to send it on it’s way into the world to see how it goes. The problem is that when we focus on finishing, we compromise the work itself.
Writing is a practice of staying in the moment, of being willing to be honest and present enough to bring the words to life. If in the back of your mind your desire to finish is nagging away, it will infect your work. The focus and attention to the moment of each story became more difficult to sustain the closer I got to the end. I kept starting and stopping because when my mind strayed to the future where I was finished, I knew the writing would be no good. It reminded me of the stories Dillard tells in The Writing Life about some of the crazy things writers do to keep themselves in the flow.
So I’ve “finished” and am taking a brief pause in taking up any big projects, taking the time to do some deep yoga work and write frivolous poems and stories for a few months. Four of the stories in the collection have found a place in the literary world. Below are links to where you can read those stories. Look for the whole collection in the not so distant future.
May you make time and find flow, friends.
The stories:
Interested in hiring me as a coach to get you boosted with your writing goals? Find free resources and information here.
Some past posts to keep you making time:
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
The original form of this blog started in 2007 or so. It began and in many ways still is a way of asserting myself as a person who writes. More accurately, a person who deserves to write. And do you know what? Being a person who deserves to write had been one of the boldest assertions I’ve ever made. To do this work, I’ve had to contend with all of the following:
And this is just a starter list. I used to post here more often. That’s because I hadn’t yet figured out what I was writing. I had a just barely 50,000 word novel I’d busted out in November 2005 (NaNoWriMo), notebooks full of poems, and a few half-baked short stories.
Now, what time I have to write (Precious little! When can I retire?!), I spend chipping away at one of the three projects I’ve got in the works: two novels and a short story collection. I also work as an editor and designer for people self-publishing their book (Red Dress Press). Oh, and I teach high school English.
So, I post to this blog less these days, always trying for once a week and falling short. But this blog is forever with me, and I am always sending out wishes for flow to all of you out there endeavoring to tell your story through art in spite of all the distractions (internal and external).
Here are some things that lately are helping me Make Time:
I’m here, writing with you. I’ve been here writing with you since I first picked up a pen at fifteen and wrote the most untutored, beautiful-in-retrospect poem. I wrote that poem as an assertion of what had to be asserted first. I want to live. I’ll find a way.
Interested in hiring me as a coach to get you boosted with your writing goals? Find free resources and information here.
Some past posts to keep you making time:
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
Let’s talk for a minute about zines. Being at the forefront of the Riot Grrrl movement, Olympia has a rich history of zines. In fact, there is still an annual Zine Fest here. I love the idea of guerilla publishing on the cheap and then distributing your work for free because you want to get your message out, which is the original intent of zines. Kind of like blogging without the internet or computers. Kind of. I mean the collage and handwriting aspect can’t be replicated by a computer which makes everything so polished and tidy. There is a special place in my heart for this brave and anti-capitalist form of self-publishing.
A few years back, some friends and I got together to make zines. I made a zine trying to articulate the core ideas behind how we Make Time for art in spite of everything. Basically, what this blog is all about. You can print and download the zine here.
Interested in hiring me as a coach to get you boosted with your writing goals? Find free resources and information here.
Some past posts to keep you making time:
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
I come from a long tradition of writers whose creativity seems to depend on movement. Long walks clear my mind, creating space for the seeds of stories to grow unchoked by the weeds of surface worry. Running cuts through my self-doubt and overthinking. Yoga feeds my intuition and cultivates mindfulness and self-acceptance. These are key qualities of mind to induce states of flow. I lean particularly on lessons learned in yoga while in revision mode. Hiking and/or backpacking cultivate the resilience to trust in the messy process. In late July, I backpacked around Mount St. Helen’s, along the Lowitt Trail, with two friends. The trail offered several physical and mental challenges, plus some nuggets of wisdom that I carried home with me to use when I returned to the page. Let me try to break them down here in a few key aphorisms.
No matter how hard I try to avoid it through careful preparation, I always seem to pack heavy. This was a topic discussed often on the trail as other hikers seemingly sped by us with comparatively petite backpacks. We asked each other: What would you leave behind to have a lighter pack? Answers were–not much. So, our packs were heavy. Except for the first overcast morning, the sun shone fiercely. We spent four days and three nights on the trail. At times the trail seemed to be a mere scratch on a cliffside, the ground just shifting sands underfoot. We trekked up and down many rock gullies. Three of these were so steep that they required ropes to navigate the trail. In a couple of places, the trail seemed to disappear before our eyes as we walked across boulder fields that stretched on and on into the distance. We scrambled our way from trail marker to trail marker, following the dusty footprints or cairns left behind by hikers before us. So much of the trail was exposed that you could see the routes ahead for miles. But here’s the thing: there is a lot of discomfort that comes with thinking about those miles ahead. Just as there is discomfort in thinking of how much further you need to go on your journey to finish your book, or to publication. For the most part, worrying too much about the future makes everything harder. During rest stops, I would pull out my map and think about the road ahead, but when we got to walking again, I tried to stay in the moment. I literally counted the number one to myself over and over to myself at times as a reminder. In this moment, there is a three-headed tigerlily proudly lit by the sun. In this moment, the lavender lupine carpet spreads out along the base of the hills and along the trails. In this moment, I can turn and see any of three mountains and feel a rewarding breeze at the top of a hill.
In writing, there is the ritual of the warmup. I feed and walk my two dogs, do a moving meditation, and prepare the sacred coffee. There is the feel of the keyboard under your fingertips, the sound they make when you get going. The pause of thinking, too. There is the moment of the story unfolding in your imagination. The stall when you get to a sticky part. The breakthrough. It’s counterproductive to the work in these moments to think too much about the miles ahead. Doing so has been known to sabotage an entire writing session. If I’m honest? It’s enough to do in a whole week of them.
The mind wants to worry about the future (or to rehash the past). On the trail, this becomes strikingly tedious. There is so much more joy to be had in turning up the senses. Notice the bright red miniature strawberries along the trail. Then bend over to pick and eat one. Identify plants and trees. Take in the panorama of trees, sky, and earth. Listen for birds, the sound of flowing water, the voices of other hikers approaching, who might have intel on upcoming water sources.
The days were long. The water sources were sparse. Our bodies were more tired and sore each day. Our feet hurt, then blistered. But what do I really remember when I look back on all that? The moments, when I had my senses turned up to the volume of awe. Every night we sat under an open sky, trying to name all the constellations we could remember knowing. That is the sort of thing we need to do as writers: turn up our senses in the spirit of constructing our stories so that the places, characters, and scenes come alive in our imaginations.
I know some people who like to hike alone. I’m not one of those people. When we stopped for water, we stood in a line so we could remove each other’s water bottles from the sides of our packs. At one point, my shoe was untied, and my friend said, here, put your foot up on my knee so I can tie it for you. We told each other stories. We pointed out what we saw along the way. We all paused when one of us needed a break. We shared snacks, sunblock, and moleskin. The end of every day was spent sitting in our camp chairs, sharing a meal, and laughing. Well, except for the night when we were too tired and possibly dehydrated to eat. But even that night, we laughed.
It can be the same way in writing. You certainly can go it alone, and I suppose that’s a quicker way to dig into the deep dark shadows of your soul if that is what you are after. As for me, I am looking to connect to others through my writing and along my journey. This means cultivating friendships with other writers, taking time to read other people’s work and give feedback, offering encouragement, writing a blog to inspire other writers, being a part of a writing group or community, and reading and reviewing other writers’ work. It’s taken me some time to see that this part is at least as important as the writing itself.
I’m taking August off from actively writing forward with my novel, focusing on rest and renewal. I’m gathering all the strength and commitment I will need to get back to my desk at 4 AM on school day mornings through the coming school year. I’m proud of myself for writing through June and July, and also for having the sense to take August off. It hasn’t even been two weeks, and I already feel the benefit of the pause. When I return to my characters again in September, I will be more present for them because I took the rest I needed to. The need for a rest may also have been inspired by the incredible effort it took to make my way all the way around Mount St. Helen’s in four days. And you bet your ass you would have heard the three of us singing that familiar refrain “She’ll be coming round the mountain when she comes” when we got there.
Interested in hiring me as a coach to get you boosted with your writing goals? Find free resources and information here.
Some past posts to keep you making time:
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
Monday, a run through the driving rain
Additional Inspiration: The Washington Trails Association pairs a few hikes with poetry!
I wanted to illustrate my point. Then, I remembered Etsy and realized that even that analogy no longer works. If you’re a writer and brave and smart enough to call yourself a writer, you probably have encountered this question or some variation of it: Have you published any books? A recent version of that question I was asked recently: Did you self-publish your book? Because heaven forbid that you did not pass through the proper gatekeepers. Certainly, unless you have the right amount of luck, persistence through pain (rejection), and proper appeal to the target market, you can’t really call yourself a writer. Maybe, just maybe, if you work your social media connections and grab yourself a Patreon account, with enough followers, you will be worthy of your assumed title:
What I’m writing to say to you is that you are an insidious lie of the worst kind. Worth does not come from marketability or earning potential. Worth isn’t earned.
Writers might be asked far more interesting questions if it weren’t for your strangle-hold on the imaginations of the masses. For instance, Writing seems really hard. How do you do it? Or How do you decide what to write about? Or What do you hope people take away from reading your book?
I get why so many people are caught in your deception. For some it’s a matter of putting food on the table. That’s one nice thing about being a writer with a day job. Making time is more difficult, for sure, but at least I can write and write and write and not worry a damn about how much money it brings in.
I am writing this open letter in case anyone needs a reminder today about the things that actually make you a writer. The fact that you sit down regularly to write, for starters. The fact that you are constantly trying to get better at your craft through reading and conversations with other writers and readers. The fact that you believe in the power of words and stories to change the world.
With a hearty flip of the bird,
Liz
Interested in hiring me as a coach to get you boosted with your writing goals?
Find free resources and information here.
Some past posts to keep you making time:
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
Monday, a run through the driving rain
Additional Inspiration:
Oneliness–A meditation on poetry, a particular poem by e.e. cummings