Author: Christine

Christine http://www.mombie.com I'm a writer/storyteller/director/creativity & lifestory coach with a black belt in ITF Taekwon-do. I read voraciously and I write like my fingers are on fire. I'm the founder and Co-Chair of the Association for the Arts in Mount Pearl and I'm the current president of the St. John's Storytelling Festival. I bake a mean chocolate chip cookie.

Wonder Woman

# Reverb10  Prompt 4 – Wonder. How did you cultivate a sense of wonder in your life this year? by Jeff Davis

In 1994, I took a course called Myth and Art lead by an amazing professor named Richard Ilgner who could make connections between things I had never thought to connect before.  He introduced me to Kerouac, whose work I loved (love) despite the fact that the fantastic freedom he and his characters enjoyed depended on women giving up their lives and dreams to support that freedon.

In one class, we were talking about how Kerouac was accused of false naivete because he found everything so damned amazing and got caught up in the wonder of the world around him.  I was totally intrigued, because while I was a fairly practical person, I did see cool things everywhere.  I watched for butterflies, I noticed rainbows in puddles (when I’m not jumping in them), and I thought these things are pretty neat. It hadn’t occurred to me that these were things that ‘grown-ups’ shouldn’t do.

Sixteen years later,  I’m not quite as good at doing these things naturally.  I feel like I have so many things to do, and so many responsibilities that I can’t tap into that wonder as easily.  And it’s true that ‘grown-ups’ can’t spend all their time floating about from one marvellous thing to another or their children won’t have all the skills they need to make their way in the world.

But that doesn’t mean I don’t do it though.  I have to flip the switch more consciously most of the time now, but I still try to smell the air, and see the rainbows and touch the tree bark.  I marvel at people and how their brains work.  How do I do that?  By letting myself be curious, by asking ‘why’ and by thinking of how my children are processing the things around them.

Especially that last one.  When I imagine how they are taking in the information the world is presenting, it seems natural to point out new information for them to absorb. I care about them finding their own way, so pointing out what the world has to offer has to help with that.

I want the structures I’ll develop in 2011 to give me much more time for wonder, much more time to let my kids wander in wonder and take me with them.

Momentarily.

#Reverb10 Day 3: Moment. Pick one moment during which you felt most alive this year. Describe it in vivid detail (texture, smells, voices, noises, colors). (Author: Ali Edwards)

I had a lot of trouble with this one.  I had lots of moments in which I felt very alive but the ones that are most vivid are very private, and sharing them would violate what made them so sharp and intense.

And I don’t think  in terms of favourites, or single-most and I’m not sure whether I’m supposed to pick the very best or just one of the many.  Since I don’t categorize things in a way that would let me distill a single shining moment, I’m just going to pick one that really makes me feel good to think of and run with that.

A Moment

I’m not good with winter, let me say that. I live in Newfoundland where it never gets very, very warm and it never gets very,very cold, but winter is damned chilly and damp and I feel much more inclined to stay inside with a book than to venture outside.

Actually, the only way I can make myself go outdoors is to find a specific thing to do out there and since but I have two boys (6 & 9) who do like to be outdoors I work hard to find reasons to get the whole family outside.  A few years ago Santa brought us all snowshoes to encourage me to have a reason to get out there.  And that brings us to my moment.

One Sunday last February, I huffed and puffed and pushed us all outside with our snowshoes and we trudged to the field by the school near our house.  If this was a fantasy or a movie, the sun would be shining and it would be unseasonably warm and my whole attitude would change at that very moment, but this was real life.

It was really cold, the wind was on my face, and everything smelled sort of sharp, but in a good way, and my boys were thrilled to be tromping around in the snow with me and The Man.  Their faces were red, except for their grins, their mismatched collection of baby and grown-up teeth gleamed at me and they challenged us to a race.

They turned and took off, legs swinging along, their feet giant in yellow and red snow shoes.  My husband and I dashed off after them, doing that parent thing where you put in a real effort while trying not to actually win a race.

My heart was racing, my breaths in were hitting the back of my nose hard and my teeth were getting dry from smiling in the cold air.  My husband was ahead of me and the boys were ahead of me, and being outside in the cold felt good for a change, and I felt like I was doing good things for my kids and myself while I was pushing my muscles just a little.

It all felt REAL and clear, and right and I was inhabiting every part of myself at once, no separate mental track, just the here and now.  And that is so unusual for this overthinker that it stuck with me.

What rises to the surface. #Reverb10 – Day 2

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Today I wrote the title after the piece,  I think that works better.

Today’s Reverb10 prompt is from Leo Babauta of Zen Habits and mnmlst : What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?

This question makes sense coming from him because he is all about cutting down to the juice, to the essentials, to keeping the important parts and shedding the rest.

I’ve been thinking about this prompt for hours now, while I did some work, tidied up, helped my kids make Christmas cards,  got ready for Taekwon-do and tooled around on the internet.  What is it that gets in the way of my writing?

I don’t have a lot of the usual writer’s procrastination things.  Blank pages hardly ever frighten me.  I don’t worry about it being perfect. I’m not hung up on publishing – although it would be nice.  I rarely worry about what other people are going to think of what I’ve written.

But, and this is a big one.  I let EVERYTHING and ANYTHING get in the way of my writing.  For example, at least two of the five things I listed above didn’t need to be done, but instead of sitting down and writing this entry, I tidied up and jumped from site to site on the ole internets.  I enjoyed Taekwon-do and making Christmas cards, and the work was necessary but I tidied and internetted it up to tune out and still feel productive (I was reading business-related blogs).

This clearly ties into my boundary thing from yesterday.

I can’t or I won’t draw a clear boundary around my writing time.  I can make anything seem more important than getting words on paper (or on screen in this case),  and that irritates the hell out of me.

How can I eliminate that?

I think some planning will help. Picking a specific time of day to write.  Picking certain things to write at given times.

But really, the thing I will have to eliminate is my internal reasoning that somehow these creative things I do for myself aren’t all that important.

I had no idea that was in there until I just typed it.

Well now, Christine, where do you go from here?

One Word, a post for #Reverb10*

I assume I’ll get better with my titles as the month goes on, but in the spirit of ‘Done beats perfect every time’ I’m going to run with this one.


My word for 2010

REACTIVE

I’m reaching the end of 2010 kind of baffled and frazzled, I’m not sure how a whole year has passed and I can’t really point to any major new accomplishments** or say THERE, that’s what I’ve improved.  The reason for all of this befuddlement and lack of progress is that I’ve been reactive all year.  I’ve been on edge, waiting to be interrupted***, and just responding to everyone’s demands without a clear set of plans for myself.  It has really left me at a loss and somewhat irritated with how I operate in my own life.

I know I need to learn to make myself a bigger factor in how I decide things, I need  to learn to say no, to have clearer boundaries, but I haven’t figured out the mechanisms for that yet.  I’ve just spent 9 years as a stay-at-home writer and freelance mombie so responding to requests from children,clients, family has become my stock in trade and I’m not sure where I want the lines to be yet.

Obviously, I want to have good boundaries around my work time, working at home tends to mean that work melts out into everything else.

I want my children to become more independent but I don’t want to cut them adrift either, the transition from responder-mom to independence-fostering mom might be a littler rough for them.

I want a little more planning, a little more scheduling, a little more…

My word for 2011

STRUCTURE

Now, I don’t mean intense, strict, no flexibility structure.  I mean, something-to-hang-my-tasks-on structure.

I don’t want a bunch of hardsided containers in specially sized slots structure,  I want a wall of funky hooks and shelves structure.

I need to have a place to put all my activities so I can get at them when I want to, and when they make sense.   I want to see where they connect so I can save myself time and energy and use that time and energy to pour into fun things for myself and for my family.

Structure will let me choose how to spend my time, and let me be clear about my progress. And it will let me put things where they belong instead of having them decide when to drop and me to picking them up over and over  like I did ‘reactively’ in 2010 .

To be clear, I don’t expect an orderly life.  I don’t expect control.  I just want to move more with the flow instead of standing still while debris in the river of my life smacks into me. I want to feel peaceful, not frazzled.

I want to be more fun – for myself, for my kids, and for my husband.


* Reverb 10, for those of you playing along at home is a month of posts reflecting on the past year and thinking about the next.  Each day the organizers provide the participants with a prompt for a post and we think and write about that topic – and comment on other people’s posts on the same topic.  You can do it too!

**Aside from my novel but that was a very concentrated effort in November – not at all what I could have accomplished with steady consistent effort over the year.

***My six year is home recovering from a fever and ironically he has interrupted me 5 times already by this point. Glerg.

NaNoWriMo – Check!

I did it!  I wrote 50,000 words in November.  50,025 actually.  And I have a decent first draft of my first full novel, and I like it!

I had a huge slack time in the middle of the month where I couldn’t seem to get much written, and it looked rather grim for this goal but then I committed myself to writing a lot over the weekend and in about 30 hours I wrote 20,000 words.  I had plenty of breaks and a full night’s sleep in there too.

And the thing is? I felt GREAT.  I didn’t get all muscle-sore from sitting too long typing.  My brain didn’t fry.  It was all good, just a logical progression through a storyline that wavered around through my head while I wrote.   I enjoyed the process immensely.

Well, I did until I got to the last 1400 words and then I met with a wall of resistance so huge that I needed mountain climbing gear and some power snacks to scale it.  At that point I really didn’t want to finish,  to finish was to be able to judge it and to let it be judged,  if I didn’t finish, I could just be working on it forever.

So, I called myself out on it and actually said aloud “Christine, this is resistance and you are not giving in to it.  You can write for 5 minutes and then walk around for 5 but you will keep coming back to the screen until you are done.”

And then suddenly I was done and submitting my word count and seeing the winner’s screen come up.  I was actually light-headed for a while, blissed out with accomplishment.

And then I wanted MORE.