First draft completed, I’m reading through it, marking it up, and using Scrivener to outline and lay out the rewrite. It’s compelling and is the only thing I want to do these days.
I finished my book draft the other night, after four and a half years of almost daily writing. My writing partner is almost done with her draft, too. This has taken us four and a half years that were going to pass anyway. Stick with your project — it feels so good to hit a milestone.
I built a fitness community around a popular brand. This time, in my writing, I don’t have a well-known brand. What do I have?
I researched a figure from my past, and when I found myself unexpectedly on the phone with her, I was ready to reach out about our shared memories. I was thrilled to have the chance to thank her for how she’d helped me in 1979.
Certain composite people, or personas, represent my Facebook audience in my mind. They morph into a gang of inner critics, and their (my) assumptions prevent me from blogging. But I don’t know what anyone thinks unless they tell me.
My mom had shown me over and over again that it was my own responsibility not to be bored when there were so many things I could do alone, such as read or draw or talk with her, write in my journal, or write a letter to my aunt.
When I’m patient with other people, I’m more patient with myself too. Patience can mean willingness to wait, which is a virtue, and patience can also mean willingness to expend effort to put oneself into others’ shoes, also a virtue. How about expending effort to look at what’s really going on, in order to decide how to respond? To me, that’s also patience. If I scatter my speech with labels and exaggerations, I’m displaying my (impatient) frame of mind, not portraying what I want to describe. I hope I’ve never said anything like this, but as an example: “This old…
The only bad thing that ever happened, bike-wise, was the night my college roommate’s and my bikes were both dismantled and most of the parts stolen. We came out of our proofreading jobs, met up on the corner, and found our bikes half missing.
When memories are fragmented or vague, I love to look up historical events to help create an accurate timeline. And I’m not sure there’s any boundary at all between memory and imagination.