One Little Elephant

I'm better at keeping Lenten promises than New Year's Resolutions. My New Year's Resolutions tend to be big and idealistic. I'll vow to tackle a massive problem with precision and perfectionism. I'll maintain a Green-Beret-ishly grueling workout schedule, or write a Tolkien-length novel every three months, or NEVER, EVER eat anything yummy again. I always fail.

My Lenten resolutions are smaller, more focused, and more practical. I usually succeed.

A decade ago our family gave up TV for Lent (one small aspect of the larger problem of time-wasting inactivity). When Lent ended, evening TV returned. But daytime TV had been vanquished for good - a real and lasting improvement. For Lent 2010 we gave up TV again and when Lent ended our evening TV habit had so diminished that DH and I took the perfectly good TV out of our bedroom and donated it to charity. It hasn't been missed.

Lent works for me. But it's December and Lent is a long way off. I need change now. So a New Year's Resolution will have to do.

In the past I'd start my hunt for the perfect resolution by looking at the big picture: Get Healthy, Get Published, More Organized House, Stronger Finances, Spiritual Growth, Be More Social, Volunteer More, etc. Narrowing it down to one or two, I'd create" a plan for achieving this goal".
It was massive, complicated, and looked awesome on paper. It was DOOMED.

Perhaps it's time to take a lesson from Lent. Isn't it better to consistently succeed small, than always fail big?


Something that's helping me write today: Advent. Advent is a time of spiritual preparation for Christmas. And I'm trying to make it that. But when it comes to writing, I'm also using the example and inspiration of Advent preparation by doing small things each day to prepare my writing path for 2011. A smidgen at a time, I'm organizing my writing, my office, my systems, my schedules, my market lists, my submission lists, etc.

I wrote scene #1 of A Zombie Romance in minutes. The only editting required was the deletion of a few extraneous adjectives and adverbs and some punctuation tweaks. That week, I could write anything (or believed I could) brain to paper, and like the result. It was heaven. The following week was very different.

I'm not inclined to believe in muses. At least not when writing is easy. But when it isn't, blaming a muse has appeal.

Getting scene #2 of A Zombie Romance down was a hair pulling experience. I wrote more than 4000 words to get the 500 I ended up with and I'm still not satisfied with those. I ran down one rabbit hole after another, couldn't turn around and was forced to back out. I finally had to just post it and forget it. It's a bit of fun after all and I needed to get back to real work.

Unfortunately last week, my muse, if there be one, was no more interested in real work than she was in a bit of fun. *sigh*

How about you? Do you have a muse? Is she faithful or fickle?


Something that's helping me write today: the courage to fail inspired by this quote from Will Rogers: "If you hit the bull's eye every time, you're standing too close to the target."

In my last post I complained that I no longer wanted to be a novelist, that it was just too hard. Immediately following that post I wrote, with astonishing ease, an entire scene I'd been struggling for days to even begin. Perhaps I just needed to gripe a little, to blow off steam.

Barabara Sher describes that phenomenon in her book Wishcraft. It's been a decade since I read it, but, if I recall correctly, she holds the view that to be successful a person needs to be allowed to complain at times, to be honest about how they feel, basically to whine. A little. And then let it go and move on.

Telling myself that things are 'fine' when I feel otherwise isn't healthy. On the other hand, constantly focusing on what is wrong would be just as foolish. I suspect balance is the key: acknowledging the truth of how I feel at any given moment, but not wallowing too long in it. Unless of course the feeling is joy, love, pleasure, etc. Those I plan to wallow in quite thoroughly.

Something that's helping me write today: a small space heater in my office ($20) that makes the room the cozy temperature I prefer without running up the electric bill or causing my polar bear husband to overheat in his office on the other side of the house.