writing
It’s In My Job Description
I'm trying, with limited success, to work three jobs. I got the one that pays the bills for 40 to 50 hours a week. I've got the one I took on when the Big Guy and I decided to become parents. And I've got the one that I'm still auditioning for – The one I get up at – still early, Buddy, don't you want to go back to bed? – 4AM to scribble in my notebook and doodle in my sketchbook for.
I slept in today. It was 5 AM when I finally dragged myself out of bed and into the shower, but I figured I had enough time before the rest of the house was awake – Stop that, kid – to get through a story revision – No you cant have the remote when everyone still asleep.
Thing2 usually does his own figuring on Saturday mornings, however. Like most seven-year-olds he has a sixth sense that tells his body clock when it's a school morning and went to get up early. Today the body clock was working perfectly, and as I sat down with my notebook and a short story I'm updating, somebody padded out in his jammies and socks.
Now, I'm sitting on the recliner with my story in my notebook and no daylight or molecules between me and my seven-year-old. i'm still editing and writing. I don't know if these are the kind of working conditions that Louisa May Alcott had to suffer through when she was an aspiring writer, but I figure scribbling away with a giggly seven-year-old – Cut it out! wrapped around my writing elbow is in my next job's description.
I can get used to that. The pay isn't so great, but the benefits are hard to beat.
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Radio Silence
For the last month, I’ve been wondering if my bipolar disorder had evolved in to something more insidious as the chorus of demands created by a stint of intense overtime at work and holiday social obligations amplified, drowning out much of what matters to me – fitness, writing and even family from time to time. I had been joking the last few days that – even as a work-at-home-mom – I spoken to my kids no more than twice a day lately (Once to tell them to get on the bus, and another time to tell them dinner is ready and go to bed).
There’s an old saying goes, “When mom ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.”. I never believed that. I was thought I was putting my family’s health and happiness first – even when I wasn’t so happy. But Saturday, as the Big Guy and I arrived home from a cross-state work party too late to get to another outing and knowing I had to throw together a potluck contribution for the town’s annual holiday Christmas party (the only place with a Santa who actually knows if Thing2 has been naughty or nice), I realized I wasn’t happy. And I wasn’t making my family happy either. I was running on empty which doesn’t leave you much to give the people you love.
Saturday night Mother Nature gave me a sign. Actually she threw up an eight inch powdery white stop sign. And Sunday, the din stopped.
We knew the storm was coming, and, while the forecasted 5-10″ isn’t’ enough to morph my Saturday grocery shopping list into disaster planning mode, I knew the weather would likely keep us housebound in the morning. I did a mental inventory of our hot chocolate and popcorn supplies, but I also began making a list of the commitments outside my door that I could now reasonably avoid a day.
Sunday quickly became a day of rest. For me, it was a day of no iPhone, no email – work or personal, no iPad or TV. There was no Facebook and no news. After a late-night saturday look at the weather map, there was Radio Silence.
Sunday, with the cacophony shut out, I was finally able to hear the things that matter. Three of them are still sleeping down the hall. The other I am nursing for the first time in over a week.
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The Windchime
After the storm, the windchime is still in its spot. It was a gift from the Big Guy’s sister who is not my sister-in-law. She’s my sister.
We didn’t have to go through all the in-fighting that adolescent sisters inflict on their parents. She lives in Southern New England, so we see each other a few times a year. Over the years, we’ve become friends and then truly family.
She brought this chime as an xmas gift a few years ago, and I keep thinking when we build a deck (which could be very far in the future given our ability to procrastinate building decisions), I’ll design a special spot for it. Now it’s hanging form a post that’s sunk into a corner of our very over-grown stone patio. I actually like it there. It seems to survive all kinds of storms, and it’s seems like it’s there to remind me to suck it up and stand firm when things don’t go perfectly.
It’s a lot like the giver in that way, and I’ve been thinking about it a lot the last few weeks as the storms of late autumn bluster through our mountain. My day job has claimed all my daylight hours and even most of my waking night time for the last few weeks. Everything else has disappeared – running, writing, down time. Even if I can set the alarm for my 4 AM writing time, often I do the numbers, realize I’ve slept four hours and reset the clock.
Sometimes it seems like it should be nothing. Writing’s just a hobby, right? But it’s also who I am. Not doing it makes me incomplete. Not providing for my family, however, would create an even bigger hole.
I’ve been there before and not by choice. A few years ago the Big Guy spent a week in the ICU because our then lack of health insurance had deterred him from seeking medial attention until a minor infection became an absess that nearly ended his life. It took years to pay off that bill, but it isn’t the fear of another ruinous bill that helps me accept being incomplete right now. It’s not even the determination never to let lack of insurance determine when we get care. Right now, what’s got me up at 5AM, girding my soul for another soulless day is that wind chime.
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The Bookmaker
Last Saturday, to much fanfare from my family, I clicked an upload button and published my first short story. Fifteen minutes later, I had my first sale and, somewhat hesitantly, added the moniker of ‘author’ to my Facebook profile.
Hesitation has been the hallmark and stumbling block of my short writing career.
I’ve wanted to write most of my life. Only in the last year and a half – on joining the Hubbard Hall Writer’s Project – did a professional writing career seem like a realistic goal.
Over the year as I’ve sketched and posted, seven-year-old Thing2 has written and sketched with me. He’s filled 5×8 notebooks with trees and robots and star systems. He’s pilfered printer paper to produce his illustrated, staple-bound paperback stories.
The weekend before I published my story, I mentioned his endeavors as I was standing in the living room of a friend and writing mentor and his wife. I had been working on their computers, and my friend was taking the opportunity to harangue me for my hesitation, even enlisting thirteen-year-old Jack to keep me on the hot seat until I hit ‘Publish’.
“I think you’re scared,” said my friend’s wife.
“You’re right,” I said and pointed to Thing2 who was hanging on my friend. “You should see the books he makes,” I said. Thing2 smiled shyly. I thought I was off the hook, but my friend’s wife smiled, apparently knowing her husband would not be so easily distracted. “He’s really talented,” I said.
“And I bet he doesn’t doubt himself,” said my friend.
“No he doesn’t, I admitted.
A week later, we were at Bob’s diner. I was enjoying the glow of seeing my first royalties.
Jack and Thing2 quickly put my accomplishment in perspective as they setup a game of table hockey, complete with salt-and-pepper shaker goal posts and a straw wrapper puck. Fulfilling the requirements of my primary job title, I did the mom thing and barked a reprimand.
Thing2 asked for my notebook, and I gave it to him.
“Are you starting a new story?” I asked. He grinned and nodded, staking out the back 10 pages for illustrations.
“Mommy,” he announced, “I want to write a book just like you when I grow up.”
“You’ll be a great writer,” I said. There wasn’t a shred of doubt in my mind or voice. The Big Guy concurred with the same confidence he expresses when he’s encouraging me.
That’s when it hit me. Thing2 and I have the same dream. I see his innate talent, but that doesn’t mean he won’t have his hills to climb. Each of us will only succeed, however, if we don’t start (or in my case stop) worrying if we have the right stuff and just climb.
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Small World
I don’t have a career. I have a job. It’s not a bad job at all, but it’s not the kind of work that changes people’s lives (for good or for ill) or – like a doctor’s or lawyer’s or reporter’s – is filled with action or big issues. It is the kind of work that lets me work from home and put food on the round pedestal table in our open-floorplan kitchen.
It’s 5:00 AM and an hour and a half from now, there will be scrambling and a mad rush out the door to meet the school bus at the end of our dirt road. Then there will be a brief calm before the workday begins. Except for the days I go to the country store, I won’t see another human being until the Big Guy rolls in with our two boys after the school bus brings them home. It’s literally a very small life.
But somewhere among the eat-your-peanut-butter-sandwich and passing-the-potatoes, at some point during the how-was-your-day’s and even on nights when the Big Guy or I might be licking a wound from a careless comment or Thirteen-year-old Thing1 is barely speaking to us because of a lost privilege, we each know our small life is pretty good.
There aren’t any late model cars in the driveway. I can’t remember the last time we sat down to dinner with 4 matching plates. There’s always dust spontaneously generating around furniture, and the next big bill is always just waiting around the corner.
But there’s also always safety. There’s always food on the table. There’s always a fire in the wood stove warming us when we need it and when we don’t, we’re still at the kitchen table making our own magic.
So, this morning, even though it’s not cold outside and even though I have a room designated as an office down the hall, at 5am, I’m already settled at the kitchen table near the wood stove. It’s not just the heat that draws me here. For me, the kitchen table is where the action – valuable and small – happens.
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The Game
I woke up a few Fridays ago determined to get my ‘down’ time in on the trail before the workday started. I got it. I also got a lesson from Mother Nature down time management.
I got the kids to the bus, miraculously in time for the first stop. Then I headed to the trail at the park. It had been raining all night, and there were still drips and drops, but there were also peeks of sunshine. By the time I stopped at the park, it was drizzling, but I wasn’t too worried. It was about to clear up.
Wrapping my mp3 player in a plastic sandwich baggie and then into my belt, I pushed play and headed down the trail. Five hundred feet into the park, the sky opened up. Instantly, I was drenched from head to toe and supremely grateful that, in my now-soaked shirt and running pants and looking like a jelly donut entering a wet T-shirt contest, I was the only person in the park. I thought seriously about turning back.
It wasn’t fortitude or courage that kept me going. It was the knowledge that I had a To-Do list a mile long. Work was next on the agenda, then (hopefully) blog posts, getting ready for a class I was about to help teach, laundry (always laundry), vacuuming, dinner and writing before bed. I knew this was the only time to get my down time.
I took refuge under a shelter when the rain was too blindingly-heavy to navigate the path. When the rain slowed, I restarted my run from the beginning, figuring I couldn’t possibly get any wetter. Mother Nature laughed and let out another sprinkle. As I got to the end of the third mile and started the fourth, it had stopped feeling like work and begun feeling like down time – without and with the rain.
That’s when it struck me that the rain was just part of the game. The weather is going to do nothing but get worse over the next few months. As I write, it’s still dark this morning. Weather and time changes close in with their excuses not to run, but the dark is also part of the game. Winning that game and getting that down time – on the trail or the keyboard – is ignoring those excuses and getting it anyway.
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What I Know
True story: until about a few weeks ago, I had never actually written a fictional short story from beginning to end (not including high school assignments). I’d written a lot of great beginnings with a few twists. Then I’d get lost in my own twists, not knowing where to go, and into my drawer of journals and half-written novels the story would go.
Part of it was that I didn’t really know how to write a short story. I’ve read hundreds of them in my lifetime, but this summer I went back and read old favorites and new discoveries, trying to see them from a different perspective. Then on one of my tag sale stops, I stumbled on a dog-eared copy of a book called “How to Write a Short Story”.
Little of the advice in the book was new, but it did contain one little nugget that I’m still mining. The gem that caught my attention was a writing prompt that suggested taking 5 objects in the house and writing the histories of each of them. The exercise (which I’m still using) helped me see where my sweet spot really is.
Once upon time, I thought I would write science fiction or historical fiction or even romance because I devoured books in those genres. I wanted to write something big that would change lives. Each time I tried to follow any of my favorite authors down that ambitious road, however, I got lost.
Then came the blog, and, instead of writing about adventure or heroes’ journeys or history or the glamorous life, I ended writing about my family. They were close at hand, and my two boys ooze inspiration, even on the days I can’t quite identify the stuff oozing from their backpacks. Even when my first post on the subject garnered a really positive reaction from our writing mentor, there was always a nagging doubt that this isn’t what I was supposed to be writing (It’s as unelevated a subject as you can find, and the internet abounds with mommy blogs).
It wasn’t until a cleaning marathon and its resulting discovery in the attic helped me use that ten cent prompt to write my first short story that had a beginning, a middle, and and end that I finally came around to the fact that family is exactly about what I should keep writing.
I’m never sure when I hit the ‘Publish’ button if something I’ve written is terribly good or just terrible. I was even less sure when I left some of my stories with a friend who is giving me feedback as I print out and finish them. But I do know that I’m having a good time writing them because I finally got comfortable with the age old advice to write what I know.
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Fear and Better Things
I know not to compare my writing to anyone else’s writing. I have my voice. They have theirs, and when a writer finds her voice it’s all good. But when a writer is finding her voice or adding a new dimension to their craft, it’s hard not to make comparisons, and it’s even harder not to feel like you’re coming up short.
Trying to make the jump from blog posts to short fiction prompted me to go back to my library of short stories. I spent the summer reading old favorites and discovering new ones. Reading feeds my inspirations and aspirations. Some of my favorite writers started with short stories, and more than a few have defined their careers as short story artists.
Now, after a summer of reading and journaling and drafting and scrapping ideas, the aspiration to make a life writing a lot of short somethings is still strong. But there has also been a nagging knowledge that my short somethings will never be the same caliber as the ones that inspire me.
I know not to make comparisons, but I still do. Now, as the end of another year approaches, I am at a crossroads. There is the option to use my voice – even if it means singing off key. Or there is the option to let fear keep it silent another year and then another.
Six-year-old Thing2 will be seven this month. He’s at the age when the world begins imposing it’s hangups, and his fearless refusal to accept the imposition inspires in a different way. He found his voice the minute he first felt a drum beat move through his body, and he will not be silenced.
We’re having a haunted birthday party very soon, but I’ll be celebrating his life and his inspiration again at the end of the month. I’ve been working on a few stories for the last few months. I’ll be putting five of them into an ebook on my site by the end of the month. It more than a deadline. It’s a moratorium on fear.
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The Race
I’ve helping a friend teach a class on the Art of the Blog for the last few weeks and another 2 weeks to go, and it’s kind of exciting for a number of reasons. One is, even though I do tech support on a daily basis, it’s kind of fun to come up with tech tips for something new and for an appreciative audience rather than a frazzled customer. The other exciting and slightly scary element was the fact that, aside from helping two kids navigate the rigors of potty training, I’ve never taught anybody anything.
I felt like I discovered myself as a writer when I attended my first serious workshop, and, even though I knew we were all different, a part of me always worried that everyone else would be a better writer. Ultimately they were better – better at writing authentically for them. The great thing about workshop last year and the blog class and Open Groups is they’re just like being in a 5K. Unless you’re in the running for the big cash prize at the end of the route, you won the moment you started the race. It’s not about the prize – it’s about going the distance. The only person you’re competing with is yourself, and encouraging the woman next to you doesn’t just help her, it helps you.
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Clutter
A few weeks ago, we threw out a ton of stuff. I don’t mean we threw out a lot of stuff. I mean we threw out 1 Ton of stuff. The Big Guy and I filled a one ton container with odds and ends we’d collected over our seventeen years together, and, I’m ashamed to say, we’ll probably be able to do it again in another month. I don’t mean to imply that our house is filled with trash, but the purge was a stark reminder that I need to look before I leap more often.
A week earlier, I had queried my writing group as to whether or not I should put some of my doodles on T-Shirts. I had an idea, not just to make money off my work, but for a line of fitness wear and T’s for plus-size women (google “plus size fitnesswear” and you’ll see there’s a market there for someone). This particular leap was inspired a sour grapes moment that resulted in my own fruitless search for running wear, and the first few responses were encouraging.
The Big Guy is always encouraging, and I began researching ‘how to print your own T-shirts’. When I the writing group page later in the day, however, a-look-before-the-leap had appeared. It was from our group’s fearless leader:
“I would finish your stories,” it said. “Then move on to other projects”
I was still determined to have something fun and different for my first race in 3 years, and I had a few pieces of T-shirt iron-on paper, but the words “Finish your stories” stayed in my head the rest of the day and the rest of the weekend.
I made my T-shirt and put a few up on CafePress (just for fun), but with the race behind me, and pre-holiday fall cleaning in front of us, I knew the last thing I needed was one more project or hobby – however good an idea it might seem. Filling that one ton container was suddenly more than a way to de-clutter our house. It was a reminder that to win the important battles, I needed to stop collecting projects and just finish the ones that matter.
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Moving In – Installing WordPress on your Self-Hosted Blog
If you’ve decided to self-host your blog, there are two options for installing WordPress on your host. The first is to visit http://www.wordpress.org and download the free software. WordPress.org does include step-by-step directions for installing the software on your site.
Increasingly, however, web hosts are offering an easy one or two click installation of the software when you purchase your hosting package. Your installation process will be similar to thethe following:
- Most hosts that offer WordPress (or other Platform choices) will present you with a control panel to manage your entire site. You’ll usually see an option to install WordPress or ‘Popular Scripts’ as shown below
- To begin, click ‘Install’. The script installer will try to detect your settings and will let you know if any changes need to be made prior to the installation. Once your host account settings are in order, your installation will begin.
- Some web hosts will do everything for you when you click install, but others may want a little information from you. The second phase of your installation screen will ask you where you want the blog stored – do you want readers to find the blog when they type in your web address, or do you want it to be a subpage on your site. Other things you may need to determine are the name of the installation directory (the installation script will create it), your Administrator user name, and the Admin password you want.For security reasons, it is recommended that you do not accept the default Admin user name ‘Admin’ or the default Installation directory of ‘wp’. WordPress is popular with readers and writers, but it is also a popular target for hackers who tend to exploit those default names to gain access to blogs:
- Click ‘Next’ and your web host will take care of the rest of the installation. Your blog’s web address will be the ‘Base URL’ address you chose. Your blog’s administration page will be at www.yourblogaddress/wp-admin. Your login information will be the name and password you chose. If you forget your password, it can be emailed to the address you provided. Again, choose an email address that can’t be deduced from the name of your web address.
- Your hosting provider will email you with your user ID and password and confirmation of the installation completion. Now it’s time for the fun part of any move-in: decorating.
Picking My Battles 