Nano Update

lizshine74by lizshine74

In On writing.

I’m managing to stay just a little ahead of the game at 25,000 words. I’m half way there and I’ve got all the symptoms. What if I run out of story before I hit 50,000? What if I fall out of love with my characters or something unforseen happens to them that I didn’t expect or want and I end up having to write about it? Don’t I have other projects I should be paying attention to? However, I will keep pushing to 50. I’m fresh out of prompts until next month, so scroll back through my blog and use one you missed from a prior week. Instead of prompts, I’ll keep updating you on my nano progress. A friend of mine is whizzing through this like it’s cake and I’m starting to get both jealous and competitive. 🙂

From Joyce Carol Oates, The Faith of A Writer: Life, Craft, Art:
“The practicing writer, the writer-at-work, the writer immersed in his or her project, is not an entitity at all, let alone a person, but a curious melange of wildly varying states of mind, clustered toward what might be called the darker end of the spectrum: indecision, frustration, pain, dismay, dispair, remorse, impatience, outright failure. To be honored in midstream for one’s albor would be ideal, but impossible; to be honored after the fact is too late, for by then another project has been begun, another concatenation of indefinable states. Perhaps one must contend with vaguely warring personalities, in some sort of sequential arrangement?–perhaps premonitions of faliure are but the sould’s wise economy, in not risking hubris?–it cannot matter, for, in any case, the writer, however battered a veteran, can’t have any real faith, any absolute faith, in his stamina (let alone his theoretical “gift”) to get him through the ordeal of creating, to the plateau of creation. One is frequently asked whether the process becomes easier, with the passage of time, and the reply is obvious: Nothing gets easier with the passage of time, not even the passing of time.

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Some past posts to keep you making time: 
Adjust your pace accordingly.
It’s about the routine and how you shake up the routine
There are things you will have to give up
See it to achieve it
Washing the dishes
Write slowly
A celebration of the pause
Monday, a run through the driving rain
Zen accident
Get out of your comfort zone

lizshine74

lizshine74

Liz Shine teaches high school English, writes, edits, and coaches other writers from her home in Olympia, WA. When she begins to feel overwhelmed by it all, she simply looks up at Mount Rainier in the distance and gets back to work. If that fails, she heads to the ocean. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press. Her Substack Make Time is her gift to writers, like her, trying to magic time in this crazy, busy world. All of those posts are cross-posted on the blog here. You can see more of her writing at lizshine.com and find her on Instagram {@lizshine.writer} cooking, traveling, and in other ways seeking moments of awe. She has been an active participant in communities of writers since the early 1990s. She’s learned that two things feel truly purpose-driven in life: writing and coaching other writers. In the in between (because one cannot be driving for a purpose every moment), she enjoys looking for wonder and connection. She is a lifelong yoga student, an enthusiastic walker along streets and trails, and an amateur gardener and vegetarian cook. She lives in Olympia, WA. She believes in the power of practice and has been practicing writing since some time in the early 90s when she became an adult in the rain-soaked city of Aberdeen. Writing began with journaling, as a way to understand a confusing, sometimes violent coming-of-age. She writes mostly fiction, some nonfiction, and poetry, and holds an MFA from Pacific Lutheran University’s Rainier Writers Workshop. She is a founding editor at Red Dress Press.