I’m still having trouble developing a full outline but it has been more of an issue of not having the time to sit down alone and map it all out than a reluctance to think about the big picture. I can sort of see how the story is going to shape up, but until I carve out about two hours to jot notes on index cards, I may not know how things will happen.

Three things I did to facilitate my writing this week:

1) I bought Scrivener for Windows: I wrote my NaNo novel in the Scrivener beta last year and even though I didn’t make full use of its features, I found it enormously useful. This year, I am breaking my novel into pieces to write it and Scrivener really lends itself to writing in sections. It’s kind of a relief to be able to work just on this one section and to know I can easily add pieces before and after it without having to scroll through a long document to do so.  Scrivener will let me just add another scene (in a separate section) right before or after and I can move the scenes around as needed.

2) I talked about my novel: I was having a little trouble moving past where I was earlier the week. I could tell I was just spinning my wheels, trying to up my word count. And that’s fine,within NaNoWriMo, if you are using it to get past the obstacle of writing in the first place. I don’t have that obstacle, I’m not afraid to put words on the page – not even 50,000 words (although, admittedly, I did need to use last year to prove to myself that I could write something that long, but I was never afraid to do it). My issue is in creating the habit of writing regularly, in not letting all the other priorities of my life crowd out my writing.

So I don’t want to just produce 50, 000 words, I want to create a complete skeleton of a story, much like I did last year. In order to do that, I need a solid thread to pull all the way through my writing and I have several key areas that I need to cover. So when my brain was spinning, I started talking about it. And I got cool input from all sorts of places.

As I mentioned yesterday, The Boy, in a matter of fact sort of way, gave me a key plot point – the demons’ motivation for certain actions.  Katie and The Man let me talk out another plot snarl and gave me good points to think about. Derek, Ange, The Man and Katie brainstormed weapons and demon defenses with me.

I’m really lucky to have such creative people around me all the time, people for whom writing isn’t a silly waste of time, but an interested, worthwhile endeavour that can be discussed just like any other work. It’s also a stroke of luck that my friends have such varied knowledge and interests that they can pull all manner of obscure and arcane references out of their heads to solve problems and help me create workable scenarios.

3) I was stubborn: I took my birthday off. I didn’t mean to, but it just so happened that there was just no time for writing that day. However, the other days this week when writing was hard, I forced myself to the keyboard and insisted that words must be generated. Last night it took me about 3 hours to produce 1205 words, partially because I was trying to write in a room full of people (writing in a room alone probably wouldn’t have worked much better though, I was not on my game yesterday) and partially because I didn’t know where to start next. I wouldn’t let myself away with less than 1200 words though because that’s how much I needed in order to be on target for day 11. So even if I ended up writing about what it felt like for my character to drive her car, I was going to keep typing until I got to 1200.

After a few false starts I ended up with a decent scene about her meeting a new character at the airport. And then with the infusion of that new character who could bring all sorts of new knowledge with her I was able to easily write over 2000 words today. I could have even written more but I decided to leave the story somewhere exciting so I could jump in tomorrow.

I’m enjoying this project and I’m enjoying learning about how to get myself to work more consistently. I am also looking forward to my experiment in increasing my word count quickly once I get that outline written.

Do you write? Do you use an outline? Does it help you write more quickly? How do you create your outline? How detailed is it? Do you find questions at the end of a post annoying? 🙂

My oldest kid turned 10 today.

10.

I have no idea how that happened. I swear that just a minute ago I put an infant in his stroller to take him for a walk, and the next thing, he’s offering me the perfect hook for the novel I’m writing.

Yes, it really feels like an infant helped me figure out a major plot point for my novel.

The Boy was born 7 weeks early and I could hardly believe I got to keep him. He was 5lbs when I brought him home and he was only as long as from my fingertips to my elbow (his feet hung over a little) – I could carry him on one arm, his head in my hand, his feet by elbow. He didn’t sleep more than 2 hours at a time until he was almost 3 (and I was already pregnant with his brother).

He was a bright-eyed little monster who absorbed the world around him from day one, and who took everything quite seriously. He can still be very serious, but when you make him crack up, his laugh is a gift. He’s too hard on himself, and he has trouble falling asleep. He’s like a clone of his Dad, but he’s bookish and dramatic like me. He’s the kindest creature you will ever encounter, he has a vast imagination, and he loves video games, fact books, and crazy eights.

He’s my boy, and I am lucky that I get to accompany him as he grows up.

Thanks for choosing me, kiddo.

…you know, November 10, my 39th birthday, but I was too busy having birthday fun to spend time writing a blog post.

Last week at the competition, two of my competitors were near my age*, one was 39, and the other was 40 or 41.  I thought nothing of this at first, because I think age is, overall, no big deal, but then they started referring to themselves as members of the geriatric squad.

Geriatric squad. Seriously? I am not a child and I would balk at being called a ‘young woman’ – not because it would be insulting, but because it is inaccurate.  But I am not part of the geriatric squad by any means. Despite being the same age, I felt significantly younger than them because I had a different attitude.

It just seems so weird to me to claim to be soooooo old at our age. Sure, I joke about being old from time to time, but it’s along the lines of ‘Oh, I’m old, I don’t have to try and impress people anymore.’  – All about the advantages of being my age, instead any possible disadvantages.

What is the purpose? Is it to let yourself off the hook for not performing up to your own expectations? Is it to get people to give you a break, or to not expect much of you? **Is it about checking out of things a bit early?

My Uncle, who died in 2001, decided at 40 that he was old. He started referring to himself as ‘an old fella’ and he started aligning himself with my Grandmother, who was almost 40 years older than him. He began complaining about aches and pains all the time, he stopped trying new things, and he developed a really closed-minded attitude toward the world around him.

So clearly, I have baggage about people claiming to be aged. But this was definitely beyond my baggage. I can’t figure out exactly what it was about though.

Maybe it had to do with being a woman who is now standing on her own, no longer trading on being cute (or whatever)? Perhaps if you admit to being old first then no one can accuse you of acting young, or dismiss you because of your age?

For me, being 39 is just fine. I feel mostly the same way about the world and its possiblities as I did when I was 20, or 27 or 33, except that I am much more confident in my role in it. So I will keep operating as if I can do the things I want to do, until I find things that I can’t. Then I will figure out if those things are actually impossible, or if I just need to practice.

And let me tell you, those things better be pretty clearly impossible, or I will likely just keep beating my head against the wall of whatever I am trying to accomplish until I find a way.

I don’t have a set of behaviours (too old/too young) attached to any given age, and I will keep doing the things I enjoy whenever I can. I won’t determine that I am ‘too old’ to get good at Taekwon-do, or ‘too old’ to go dancing, or ‘too old’ to try a new way of looking at things because that mindset makes no sense to me.

The only downside about being 39, is that people assume I am lying and that I am actually 40 or 45. Seeing as I would never try to claim to be any younger than I am, I find that really damn irritating. I am the age I am, and that’s cool. Claiming anything else is inauthentic, and that doesn’t fly with me.

I would like to be able to tell the other competitors that their divisions don’t work for me, and that they don’t have to think like that. Except, of course, that they might be ‘too old’ to believe me.

*The fourth was 26, but she wasn’t part of the odd situation I’m describing.

**Am I overthinking a casual joke? Highly likely.

Two weeks ago, I saw a link in a tweet from Katy Bowman (@alignedandwell) about standing desks and I decided to try it out for the afternoon. It felt so good that I’ve been standing to work ever since.

I’m a writer, and I do the books for my husband’s company, so I generally spend a lot of time sitting around. I have an ergonomic chair, and I take frequent stretch breaks, but it’s really not enough. After a day of sitting, I feel compacted, jammed together and generally weary, in body and mind. I have done all manner of things to try and perk myself up and break the sluggish feeling at the end of the day (presuming I haven’t interrupted myself multiple times in my efforts to stay alert), but nothing really helped.

Now that I’ve spent the past two week standing up at my desk (with everything elevated to somewhat proper heights) to work, I don’t think I will ever go back. Not only do I feel more alert, and more energetic but I get more things done and I don’t feel brain-heavy at the end of the day. And I’ve been more inclined to do a few exercises here and there, to stretch more, and to wander around my office while thinking.  The only thing I miss is being able to lean back in my chair to stare at the ceiling while daydreaming the next point in my story – but if I want to do that, I can always go into a different room.

I expected that I would find it hard on my feet and my legs, but I can honestly say it hasn’t been tiring at all. I put a yoga mat in front of my desk to help with potential fatigue, and I am naturally shifting position on a regular basis so I am not getting tired from standing in one spot. It’s damn good.

It’s been great for writing my novel, for doing the accounting (getting the paperwork high enough to work from was a challenge, but I managed), and for my writing work. I feel much more positive about my workload and about my work day, and standing to write makes it feel more immediate and more necessary (I don’t know why, but it does).

On top of the immediate effects, it feels good to know that I am making a positive step for my health (even if that step is very small).

Now I’m looking into getting a treadmill desk sometime next year.

Well, I don’t know if it would have paid, I didn’t make one. I had every intention of creating a nice outline for myself today, as well as checking a few other things off my to do list.

I managed to check a number of things off my list, but I didn’t get the outline written. I think the problem was planning to do it.

Sometimes I can create a plan out of nowhere, at the last minute, or just in the nick of time. If I plan to plan, however, I stall. I didn’t think of creating an outline as the sort of plan that I might resist doing, but apparently it is.

I think the issue is that plans create too much of a sense of what ‘should’ happen for me, and then when things go off (as they invariably do) I am way too hard on myself about it. It’s easier to just fumble along and deal with emergencies (or in this case, random ideas) than to create a plan that I might not be able to follow.

Perhaps as I get better at learning how to run with what’s happening, I will also get better at planning. It sounds sort of contradictory, I know but you need to have a certain flexibility to be able to work a plan and without that, you risk throwing the whole plan away when things don’t work.

I’m being hard on myself here, stating the case a bit too baldly. I can be flexible in many circumstances, and I think well on my feet – but that’s being responsive to the situation , and that I can do. The ability to create a plan and then change course within the parameters of that plan, that’s a skill set I need to work on.

The question is, how do I deal with it right now? I think I need an outline in order to go forward. The outline, however, refuses to be written at the moment.  I don’t think this is a problem of focusing on the results, that doesn’t feel like where the issue is (although obviously it is part and parcel of the same thing). Perhaps this is a problem of practice? Perhaps I need to think of this as outlining practice (similar to the practice of yoga) and not about getting good at it, but about the practice itself. Practice for its own sake.

On that note, I’m going to do a little writing and then head to bed. Perhaps with some sleep and a plan to practise I will be able to start outlining tomorrow.