Accountability Tuesdays – Week 29

Before I get on with the accountability today, I want to mention a couple of things.

First, a huge hug to the new followers I’ve been getting on this blog and on Twitter. I’m not sure exactly what I’ve been doing lately that suddenly has people sneaking in out of the shadows toward my sites, but I’m not one to look a gift horse in the mouth. Welcome, thanks for coming, and I hope you stick around! 🙂

Second, on a whim I recently tried Googling myself, and I was quite amused to find that the first three results were actually me. I rather don’t need my 9gag profile popping up on Google, but I was happy to see that the second result was this blog and the third was my 750Words.com account. It’s a good sign when your real persona pops up on Google, right?

Third: a call out for info and/or advice. I’ve Googled this problem many times but I can never seem to find anything that quite matches my issue. I’ve been having trouble sleeping again (it seems to happen for several weeks at a time, a few times a year), and the issue as far as I can describe it is that I spend an inordinate amount of time in dream sleep (REM sleep), meaning that my rest isn’t, well…restful. I’m waking up feeling like hell even when I sleep 9 or more hours, and it’s very wearing. I’ve consulted my doctor before and his only suggestion was to try antidepressants, which I thought was a little silly and insulting since I’m pretty damn confident that I’m not depressed. So since I can’t seem to find any information on my own, I thought I’d ask here on the off-chance someone may know something or suffer from similar. Help?

Okay, on to the accountability.

Health and Body Image Goal

If I’m totally honest, I’ve plummeted miserably on this one. I’ve been doing no form of exercise and have been eating rather terribly. It doesn’t help that I’m experiencing sleep issues, as mentioned above. I keep trying to convince myself to get up a little early in the mornings (before it’s scorching hot out) and do my zombie runs, but I haven’t been able to manage it because I’m so damn tired. I need some motivation, terribly, and that’s a fact.

Editing Goal

It’s been a surprisingly busy week so I haven’t managed to sit down at my laptop for very long periods of time, but I’m still (slowly) plugging away at my supernatural romance. Really, really looking forward to finishing so I can submit it to a publisher and move on to my zombie apocalypse.

1,000,000 Word Goal

It hasn’t been a great week, but I did manage to get a few words in. Between blogging and a return to 750Words, I managed to get in 4802 words this week. I’m hoping to ramp it up this week through a series of ideas I’ve compiled, one of which is to use 750Words.com in the mornings to empty my brain of the dreams I’m plagued with every night. It might be a pro-bono situation…I get extra words, and maybe writing down the dreams will make them go the hell away. Starting this Sunday, as well, I plan to start reading The Artist’s Way and work my way through the 12-week process, so look forward to that.

29 weeks down, 23 to go. Here’s hoping the remaining 23 start to look up a little!

A Memorable Idea

This past weekend was full and tiring. My parents visited Friday night, and two awesome friends visited Saturday night. There was drinking and eating and cleaning up before and after visits, and between all that we had the baby outside in her pool, going for walks and playing with the neighbor’s grandkids. In addition to all that I had a hard time sleeping Friday night, and we were up drinking and playing foolish trivia games until 3 am on Saturday night, so I’ve developed a rather debilitating sleep debt.

This is currently the face of my jealousy.

So it is with bags under my eyes and an enormous yawn on my lips that I sat down at my laptop and struggled to think of something to blog about for today. I considered a number of previously-planned options that made my head hurt because I am simply too tired to deal with them right now. I thought about reading the first chapter of The Artist’s Way and talking about that, but it turns out that there are half a dozen introduction chapters that seem pretty important before you get to the actual program part of the book, and my addled brain can’t really handle that at the moment. I thought about simply writing about my weekend, about the tomfoolery that occurs when the husband and I get together with our friends and some good liquor, but I couldn’t figure out how to work that into anything coherent and interesting.

With those ideas set aside, I thought I’d mention something that I had been meaning to bring up for a while. It’s an idea I came up with one day a while ago, something that’s one part memory exercise, one part mental therapy, and one part keepsake-that-can-be-helpful-when-writing.

I call it a Memory Book, for lack of something cooler. I don’t remember when or why I came up with the idea, but one day I picked up a pretty notebook and a nice pen, and I began writing down memories. I don’t make the memories long and complicated; they’re generally just a one-or-two-liner that gives the basic idea. For instance, I might write, “That time I decided to roller-blade to school, but the hill was too steep and I ended up having to admit defeat.”

The memories can be good ones (“The first time Jason told me he loved me…he looked so cute and nervous!”) or bad ones (“The first time I left for out West and I was waiting for the plane while struggling not to cry.”) or just random things from my past that mean nothing but that are non-the-less cluttering up my brain (“The time our cabin water was shut down so we kept having to collect stream water in buckets in order to be able to flush the toilet.”). Any random memory that I can think of can end up in the book.

So what’s the point?

Well, for one thing it exercises my memory (which has gone so downhill over the past six or seven years of my life) to bring up information that might be buried deep; alternatively, re-reading it allows me to recall things I may have allowed myself to forget about.

For another thing, it can be very therapeutic. Instead of struggling to think of something to write for my works-in-progress or my blog, I can just sit with this notebook and spill out information that’s already in my head, like a mental Spring Cleaning.

And lastly, having this notebook handy has actually been helpful to my writing. See, one of the hardest aspects of writing fiction (in my opinion) is coming up with relatable characters, people whom the readers will love and sympathize with. Part of this is making the characters feel more real, and in the past I’ve been able to accomplish this by using my Memory Book and juicing the memories up a bit to craft pasts for my characters. Why is a certain character so shy? Because of this embarrassing event, stolen from my Memory Book and blown up a bit to make it sound even more mortifying. How did two other characters meet? Steal something from the Memory Book and spruce up the details a bit. See what I’m saying?

A Memory Book might not be useful for everyone, but it’s been useful for me in several ways, so I thought I’d share and invite everyone to give it a try. It doesn’t have to be anything fancy…it could be a Dollar Store notebook tucked into your purse or wallet, or a Word file on your computer. You can write about any kind of memories you like, and you can write quick one-liners like me or write a whole page for each. Whatever makes it work for you.

Give it a try and let me know how it goes! I’d love to hear from you!

Your Children Know What You Did Last Summer

Children are remarkably perceptive little creatures, and they are ever watching, ever listening, ever learning. Did you know that it is believed that children learn 90% of all the words they’re ever going to learn between the ages of 6 months and 18 months old? The theory is that they spend these months observing, often watching the mouths of others while they speak rather than focusing on their eyes. They learn the sound of the words, along with the motion the mouth makes while saying them, and gather up all this information for later. Only after gathering enough information about the way speech works do they actually attempt it themselves.

Many parents will tell you that you have to start watching what you say when you have kids, and this is definitely true. How often to you catch small children swearing, after all, because they recognize words that their parents say often? I don’t want to speak specifically about speech, however, because most people already realize that kids hear everything. What I want to point out is that kids see and feel everything as well.

I’ll give you an example. My daughter loves to do puzzles, which is awesome because it’s great for her brain, but she always wants myself or my husband to sit with her while she does her puzzles. She doesn’t necessarily want us to join in or anything, she just wants us to be there. So okay, that’s fine; I’ll usually sit with her and have my iPhone or my laptop with me and I’ll pluck away at something while she’s doing her puzzle. I’ll smile and nod and praise her at the appropriate intervals, while also multitasking on something else I have (or want) to do. This is what we were doing a few weeks ago, up in her bedroom. She was plucking away at her Tinkerbell puzzle, and I was praising her while browsing Twitter on my iPhone. What I failed to realize as this was occurring, was that I wasn’t really so much paying attention to her as I was smiling and nodding while focused intently on my phone’s screen. I didn’t notice what I was doing…but she sure did. Even though I was doing basically the same thing that I would have been doing had I not had the phone with me (smile, nod, say “Good job!”), she was fully aware that I wasn’t paying attention, and she didn’t like it. Before I knew what was happening, she stood up, took the phone right out of my hand, placed it on her bookshelf, and said, “There, that’s better!” before returning to her puzzle. I was shocked for a moment, but it didn’t take me long to burst into laughter. She really told me! She knew that I was only paying her lip service while I was glued to the Twittersphere, so she resolved the issue herself.

Kids notice these things. They are a lot more in tune to what is going on around them than adults give them credit for. They know when you’re patronizing them, they can tell when you’re flat-out lying to them, they notice when you’re genuinely upset, they see things that you don’t even realize you’re doing. Think of all the times a child has spouted off a surprising phrase that you didn’t notice you said all the time, or the times a child has followed you around, copying mannerisms you never noticed you even had. If you don’t have kids of your own, think back to when you were a kid. Couldn’t you tell if your mother was sad about something, or your dad had suffered a bad day at work? Didn’t you try to copy the way your mother applied lipstick, or the way your father shaved? And don’t even try to tell me that you can’t think of at least one instance of a parent or a loved one bursting into laughter or getting embarrassed because of something you said, and you didn’t understand what the big deal was because you were just repeating something they had said.

“Don’t worry, ma, I’ve been paying attention and I’ve totally got this.”

It’s an important thing to remember when dealing with children, although we tend to forget it more often than not. Remember that this little creature is watching you, seeing everything you do, hearing everything you say, picking up on your emotions and moods, and learning. Most of all, learning. Everything you do or say, everything you present to them in everyday life, is a lesson. What are you going to teach your children today?

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 24

Do I look super sweet and trustworthy? I only ask because today marked just about the hundredth time that an elderly lady picked me – out of an entire airport full of people – to ask where she had to go/what she had to do or to just sit down and start having a conversation with me like we were old pals. I’m not complaining, I just find it humorous. I’m a young adult wandering around an airport with a Batman t-shirt and “I didn’t get a wink of sleep last night” bags under my eyes, and somehow this translates to “ideal travel companion” to little old ladies. *shrug*

Oh wait, I’m traveling again… That must mean its time for more accountability. Huzzah! 😛

Health and Body Image
I’m sad to say that I tapered off on this one last week, mostly because it rained and rained and rained, and I just can’t deal with running in the rain. On that note, after my husband asked me what the hell I was going to do in the winter, I started working on cleaning up our basement so I can use the treadmill again. Not ideal (I find running on a treadmill really hard on my knees) but it’ll be better than not doing anything. In the meantime I’m on my way back out to Fort Mac, where it’s dry as a bone 90% of the time, so yay for getting back to running! The audial zombies have been waiting for me, I’m sure.

Editing Goal
As previously mentioned, I’ve been trying to get rid of my short supernatural romance before moving back to my zombie novel. It’s much quicker going – I’m already halfway through chapter 3 of 10 – so I don’t expect it to take too long. Though I much, much prefer to work within Scrivener, I’ve exported my files and taken them out West with me on my tablet so I can continue to pluck away. Hopefully I won’t screw up my formatting…that stuff drives me looney.

1,000,000 Word Goal
I did a silly thing this week. Namely, I forgot to keep track of my writing. Mostly I only did blog posts, and I can tell you that those accounted for 4329 words, but there’s some more in there somewhere from reworded romance scenes that I neglected to record. I can figure it out…but not without my laptop. So for now we’ll go with the 4329. I’ll add the rest at a later date and report my grand total instead.

And now, my friends, it’s time for another plane ride. Thank puppies I have a good book to read.

Sitting Pretty

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

77. Desk exercises and stretches

This is something I’ve actually looked into recently, due to my “promotion” to a desk job. It’s a great job, and I love that I’m in out of the cold now, but sitting at a desk for almost 12 hours a day, 14 days straight, can really wear on a body. Writers know this pain as well, and with that in mind, here are a few good stretches I’ve found that I like:

Shoulder Shrug
Just like it sounds, shrug your shoulders. Sit up straight while you’re doing it, shrug your shoulders up as though you’re trying to touch them to your ears, and then release and let them fall as far as they’ll go. Repeat 10-20 times at once several times throughout the day.

Wrist/Arm Circles
When using a computer or doing a lot of writing, it’s good (and feels nice) to stop every now and then and do some wrist circles. Literally just lift your hands and turn them in circles, stretching out your wrists. In addition to this, it helps your back and shoulders if you stretch your arms out to the side and move them in slow circles, both forward and backward.

Toe Touches
If plausible, it’s an excellent stretch to simply stand up, bend over, and try to touch your toes. If you can’t reach your toes, just stretch forward as far as you can comfortably go, and if touching your toes is too easy, continue to stretch forward as long as you still feel comfortable. It’s an excellent stretch for your legs and back.

Leg Hug
You can do this from a chair, possibly, but it’s much easier on the floor if that’s an option. Basically, lift your knees to your chest, wrap your arms around them, tuck your head down, and hug yourself. It stretches out the back and legs, and also gives a little stretch to your arms as well.

Go for a Walk
Seems obvious, but if you’re going to be spending extended periods of time at a desk, it’s a good idea to take a little walk every now and then. It doesn’t have to be anything extreme…when I’m at work and I start to cramp up I just get up and walk to the lunch room, grab a drink, and walk back. It gets the blood flowing and the limbs limbered up.

Anyone else have any good desk stretches or ways to keep your body working while dealing with extended periods of sitting? Please share!

 

Tune Out the World

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

74. Music or silence while writing

Remember back in school when you had two or three different sources (parents, teachers, etc) telling you to turn off that TV/radio/Walkman/whatevs and concentrate on your homework? I always hated that, hated it with a passion, because for me music always helped me with my homework. That’s not to say that all music is the same…Metallica doesn’t exactly encourage academic thinking…but for the most part having background noise has always helped me concentrate. I’ve always found silence to be strangely distracting. Whenever I tried to do homework without music playing or a show on the TV, I’d find my mind wandering to other things, as though it was somehow desperate to fill up the silence. I don’t really know why, but I always found it particularly difficult to focus if it was too quiet around me.

This desire for background noise has followed me into adulthood and manifests itself while I’m writing. I find it nearly impossible to sit down in a silent room with a pen and paper (or my laptop) and just write. My brain ends up floating off in a hundred different directions. That’s not to say that there aren’t some kinds of noises that are distracting. Writing in the lunch room at work, for instance, is damn near impossible because there are conversations happening all around me and it’s difficult to tune that kind of thing out. Writing with music playing, however, is bliss. It’s just the right kind of noise to allow my subconscious mind to occupy itself while still allowing my conscious mind to keep on task.

No matter how many times I try to explain this, however,  I have never yet found an employer that agrees to let me listen to music while working…I wonder why that is? 😛

Accountability Tuesdays – Week 3

Is it Tuesday again already? Ugh…this isn’t going to be a good one. I mean, wait…no, I totally wrote all the words…>.> Really, you don’t even have to read the rest of this post because I totally win all of the things. You don’t have to hold me accountable this week because I’m awesome.

I’m awesome. And don’t you forget it.

Okay, okay, I’m going to do an accountability post just because I said I would, but you don’t need to pay attention to it, okay? Okay. Glad we have an understanding.

Health and Body Image Goal
Can we…uh…can we forget about this one this week? It’s not that I haven’t been trying (except for the fact that I totally haven’t), but I also caught some kind of a head cold the night before last and there’s really no way I can feel anything other than completely terrible at the moment. There’s always next week though, right? Eh-heh…bleh…

Editing Goal
Okay, I’m going to admit something here, something that I am not proud of. I admit that the printed copy of my manuscript for editing purposes is sitting exactly where I left it the last time I looked at it about two months ago. I’m home right now and it’s sitting there waiting for me to give it half a glance, but I haven’t so much as picked it up. I’ve found neither the time nor the willpower.

1,000,000 Words Goal
Well I can honestly say that I did some writing, though it’s not near what I was hoping to accomplish, being that I’m home and able to use my laptop instead of writing freehand, which is considerably slower. Over the past week I’ve written 3567 words toward my current work-in-progress, and a measly 299 words toward this blog, for a total of 3866 words, the least I’ve done yet. Granted I’ve been sick the last couple of days and I’ve been busy with house stuff all week, but I’m still disappointed. Hoping that I can boost things up a bit this week by writing some blog posts in advance. Wish me luck. @_@

No, but they’re really supportive, I swear! :P

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

34. An interview of your significant other about your writing habits

I have two issues with this entry. One is that I waited until I was halfway through my trip across the country to start writing it. The other is that if I asked my significant other if I could interview him about my writing habits he’d probably give me a strange look and ask me if I was cracking up. So for the sake of argument I’m going to write what I think my significant other (my husband) would say about my writing habits:

“Haven’t you finished that story yet? Is this the same one or a different one? Are you even listening to me? Goddammit, is it NaNo time again?”

Heh…that made me chuckle a little. 🙂

As an added bonus, here’s what my daughter thinks about my writing habits:

*sees me typing on my laptop, walks over and pushes the laptop cover closed* “All gone!”

Back to Basics

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

33. Reviews of your favorite office supplies

A few years ago I probably could have made this post long enough that no one in their right mind would have bothered to read it all. Traditionally, I love writing in a notebook with a really nice pen, so I have a bit of an unhealthy relationship with office supplies. As I’m typing this there is an entire shelf on one of my bookshelves devoted to my notebooks, and about a third of them are almost completely empty…I bought them because I fell in love with them at the time, but only wrote a few pages before getting distracted and/or moving on to something else.

These days, as previously mentioned, I do the overwhelming majority of my writing on my laptop. It’s just quicker that way. That said, I do still have a couple of favorite manual writing supplies that I can say a couple of words about, for the sake of this post:

1. Cambridge City Vinyl Notebooks
I’ve used a lot of different notebooks, but this one has to be my favorite. The vinyl front and back covers feel almost like a supple leather, and the spiral binding is very tough and stiff so you don’t end up with those annoying bent spirals that constantly get your pages all caught up. The pages themselves are beautifully ruled, as beautiful as ruling can be anyway, and all in all the notebooks are a pleasure to write in.

2. PaperMate Capped Ballpoint Pens, Fine, Blue
You might think I’m kidding about this one because these are quite possibly the cheapest pens on the planet, but I’m totally serious. I’m a bit of a pen nut, and these ones remain, to this day, my absolute favorites. They write smoothly, they’re comfortable in the hand, and as previously mentioned, they’re quite possibly the cheapest pens on the planet. What’s not to love?

Just the Necessities

A reminder: This post courtesy of Julie Jarnagin’s 101 Blog Post Ideas for Writers.

31. I can’t sit down to write unless…

…I’m awake.

Okay, okay, I’m sorry; that was a little smartassish of me. But it’s more or less the truth. I don’t need any particular equipment, situation, reason, or emotional state in order to sit down and write. I just need to have some thoughts in my head worth writing.

BUT, there are a number of things that make writing easier and more enjoyable for me, so I’ll just go ahead and tell you about those:

– Obviously I need something to write on, and if necessary I can use pretty much any form of media, but if at all possible I prefer to use my laptop. I love writing by hand, but I find that it takes too long and a lot of times I’ll have lost the thought process I was relying on by the time I get around to actually physically writing the words down. I’m a pretty fast typist, so the same issue doesn’t apply when I’m on my laptop. Alternatively, using my iPhone or tablet doesn’t yield the same effect because I’m a traditional typist and holy hell is it hard to type with any kind of speed on a touch-screen.

– Silence is not necessary, as I’ve been known to write from the couch while my husband is killing video game zombies in the armchair two feet away, but some level of quiet is very helpful. I can, for instance, write while my daughter is watching Sesame Street, but I cannot write while she’s pitching a fit because she doesn’t want what I gave her for lunch.

– Some level of comfort is preferable. For instance, I’d rather write in pajama pants and a tank top than in jeans and a blouse. I’d rather write laying in bed, propped up by pillows, than at a computer desk. Comfort = happy = better writing.

– Just as a last little note, writing is always a slightly happier experience if I have a nice hot drink to sip on while I’m doing it. Coffee is nice, some kind of herbal tea is even nicer, and hot chocolate definitely tops the list. And while we’re at it, some kind of delicious snack doesn’t hurt either. 😉