Finding home, finding love – writing romance, making clothes, growing food, and growing up

Adventures in living an authentic creative life

Monthly Archives: May 2012


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Morning pages- number one tool for change


Photo by dcJohn

One big difference I’m noticing in myself lately is that I’ve stopped apologising for existing. It’s like growing into who I really am. I speak my mind more. I’m making different choices to those I might have made six months ago. Instead of waiting for things to happen, or playing “I’ll be happy when…” I’m making things happen, and I’m choosing to be happy now.

The key thing I believe helped me change, start living more authentically, is writing morning pages every single day. Seven hundred and fifty words, the equivalent of three pages, every day, just writing whatever comes into my head without thinking too much. First thoughts. Wild writing. Okay, some days they’ve been evening pages, but they got done.

I started this back in February, and it’s made a huge difference. I’ve done it in the past, but not nearly as consistently, or as long. I haven’t missed a day. Morning pages are amazing. They’ve helped me find a clarity and level of honesty I don’t think I would have found any other way. Most of what I’ve blogged lately comes from there.

There’s no right or wrong way to do morning pages. Typed on a computer. Handwritten in a pretty book. Scrawled on loo paper even.

There’s no right or wrong thing to write about either. It’s whatever is in my head. Sometimes that’s a rant about something frustrating me. Sometimes it’s a big To-do list. Sometimes it’s problem solving, exploring alternatives. Sometimes it’s a scene for a story, just popping up out of nowhere. Sometimes it’s a messy mix of all of this.

I use either my laptop or PDA. I could handwrite faster than I type, but I like being able to read it back, cut and paste bits elsewhere. Loo paper wouldn’t work for me, impossible to read back! And the pretty book would just plain intimidate me and make me feel I had to write pretty thoughts, too. It would stop things being so raw.

My morning pages are definitely not pretty.

What they are is consistent, at least 750 words long, and written every day, as soon as I can after I wake up.

The last few days are full of crossing out. I’m trying to remind myself just how much in my life is my choice. Every time I write “have to”, “must”, or “need”, I’m striking it through. Not deleting it, the word I chose initially is the word I chose, so that’s how I felt when I wrote it. Next to it though, I’m writing “choose to” or “want” instead. Just to remind me.

What’s important is not to judge what I write, just let it be what it.

I’ve written a lot of drivel today. All about buying and selling and wanting a load of ”stuff”.  But it’s just as real and valid as the deep emotional stuff. This is my concern now. This is what is in my mind. There’s no right or wrong topic for morning pages. No “You can write about this but don’t you dare write about that.”

 So one day I write about growing up at last and letting go of resentment, and connect with a hidden part of myself. The next day I’ll use all the words up pondering if I can give myself permission to shell out for a Kindle and how I’ll come up with the money. All equally honest. All equally real.

I hope so anyway!


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Taking off the fat suit


Illustration by thelaziestpaw

An onion, a prison, or twenty sets of clothes worn all at once? (See yesterday’s post!)

Maybe those layers of limitation we put on ourselves and need to peel  away to live authentically is like all those clothes that make someone look fat when they’re not. A kind of fat suit, disguising the real person. I know about that. I’ve lost huge amounts of weight, taking off my personal fat suit, twice over. 

To do that, I had to give up all my excuses, just like I am now with my writing.

Before I could change, lose the weight, I had to deal with some questions. What was the fat protecting me from or an excuse for or otherwise doing for me? What was the payoff for staying fat? I couldn’t lose weight unless I looked at what the key benefit of being fat was. Until I knew that, how could I choose to do anything differently to change things?

When I lost weight the first time, in my early thirties, I woke up one day knowing it was time to change my life. Simple as that.

What allowed me to let go of the weight was suddenly realising I wanted to punish my parents. My fat was my unhappiness made visible. I didn’t need to tell them they’d made me unhappy, they could see it.

I had to make a choice- did I want to punish them more than I wanted health and happiness?

Obviously, I wanted to be happy more. I lost weight, easily and without really needing to try too hard. I just started exercising more, and didn’t want to eat the junk food I’d been stuffing myself with.

There were other issues of course, other road bumps I hit along the way as I lost weight. I longed for love but felt deeply afraid of being hurt by risking a relationship. I’d used the weight to hide myself, to avoid letting anyone get close to me. Literally. If anyone touched me, they didn’t really touch me, they touched the fat. If anyone hugged me, I had an extra six inches between me and them to keep me safe. It felt like the fat wasn’t part of me, something external. My fat suit.

There are plenty of abundantly sexy larger women, women who are the size they’re meant to be, women who are perfectly confident in their attractiveness exactly as they are.

I was not one of them.

Losing weight didn’t change that. I struggled with feeling more attractive as I lost weight. I screwed up relationships with my insecurity and fear of real love. Until I found a man who’d stick with me, no matter what.  Then over ten years later, seven miscarriages behind me, I got fat again.  Nearly back to my heaviest weight ever.

I had good excuses. My hormones didn’t know where they were, after so many pregnancies. I had a stressful job. My husband lost his. There are always plenty of excuses if we want them.

Oh, I wanted to lose weight. I tried. But it all seemed too hard, for so many reasons. Perimenopause. Crazy busy job with a long commute. No time to cook meant eating supermarket ready meal pasta arrabiata and garlic bread every night. With two or three glasses of wine. And dark chocolate. Unsurprisingly, I didn’t lose much more than a few pounds, no matter how much I told myself I wanted to.

It took a night in hospital with chest pain that could have been a heart attack but thankfully wasn’t to make me look at the truth. The real too-shameful-to-admit reason I didn’t want to let go of my fat. Same old thing, except instead of punishing my parents, I was punishing my husband. Showing him- look how miserable you’ve made me.

After the seventh miscarriage, he refused to let me get pregnant again. His way of protecting me, making sure I didn’t experience that heartbreak again. He would only have sex with a condom. I hated him for that. I thought about all sorts of options, from leaving him, to having an affair, to simply putting holes in the condoms.

I didn’t do any of them. In some deep hidden secret part of me, I was relieved not to have to go through it again. The hope. The excitement of the positive test. The constant anxiety, waiting for the bleeding to start. The anguish when it inevitably did, after one week or sixteen weeks.

The price of course, was giving up on ever having a child of my own.

But hey, it wasn’t my choice, right, it was his. I had someone to blame. Perfect. I could be angry with him for stopping me. Much better than being angry with myself for being too gutless to try again. Or angry with my stupid useless body for letting me down and not doing this one simple thing millions of other women could do. I could stuff those feelings down with food. I could show him how much he’d hurt me.

And I did.

Then, crunch time. I had to choose. What did I want more- to lose weight and cut my risk of the chest pain really being a heart attack next time, or to keep on comfort eating and punishing my husband?

My grandmother dropped dead from a massive heart attack in her fifties. I didn’t want that to happen to me. I still had too much I wanted to do. It was time. Time to stop using weight to show my husband how unhappy I felt. Time to stop hiding the real me behind my fat body. Time to stop using food and alcohol to stuff down my emotions.

I lost the weight. Over eighty pounds, again. I’m now the lightest I’ve been in my adult life, eating almost totally raw vegan and loving it. I’m hoping I won’t put on weight again. I don’t think I will. I’m ready to give up using fat as a weapon or as somewhere to hide the real me.

I’m ready to stop hiding, full stop.

It’s time for me to grow up and own this body and this life of mine. Start living honestly and authentically. Start living raw and wild. Start living more and more as that creative me I’ve only allowed out in transient glimpses.

So now I’m not hiding behind weight, what else am I hiding behind? What other excuses do I need to let go of?

I’m willing to find out.


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Making my own prison – and breaking out of it

Breaking free
Photo by Matthew Wilkinson

Time to stop beating myself up for not writing enough.

I need to give myself permission to take it easy for a while, I think. This is my preparation time for really getting back into writing.  Not so much the physical preparation, like learning to touch type (I can do that now, almost!), or getting a proper writing space ready. More the deeper emotional preparation. dealing with the issues that have held me back.

So when I do drop those two days at work a week , when I finally have more time, I have no more crappy excuses not to write.

I started doing Holly Lisle’s “How to Think Sideways” course, as part of the preparation. The plan was, I’d follow the course to write the next story. I hadn’t realised the first month is all about getting out of our own way. removing the blocks that we’ve used as excuses for too long. It ties in so perfectly with what I’ve already been doing, in my morning pages and here in the blog.

I have to give up the “No time” excuse. When I only work at the Day Job two days a week, and that will bring in just enough to meet our financial needs, I can’t keep using that as a justification for not writing.

I can’t keep hanging on to the Victim excuse by blaming my childhood any more either, now I know about it. Time to stop limiting myself with ”Poor me, I never made it as a writer because I didn’t get the encouragement I needed back then.”

So powerful to start realising this stuff, what fuels the blocks, and start taking responsibility for my own thinking.

What I’m finding though is layers underneath that again. Just when I think, “Okay, I’m good with that, that bit’s done”, I find something else hiding beneath it.

I’m still scared of starting again.

Not of the work of writing. Of having the time and still not being able to do it. Not having the excuses means I have to face that if I don’t succeed it’s because I’m just not good enough.

The reason I wanted to hold on to that Victim role is the fear that it covered up. If I can blame someone else for me not writing, I never have to face the fear that actually, I have no talent as a writer. Fear of knowing for sure what I secretly suspect- I’m really not good enough.

Of course, I really knew that fear was there all along. But I hadn’t really touched it. I knew it intellectually, but I hadn’t felt the fear. I really got in contact with that ten year old me who is hurting and rejected and feeling sad, yes, but she’s also angry as hell and is never ever ever going to feel like that again.

 So protective parent mind finds  a way to keep me safe from that. If I write, I sub half baked first or early second draft. Or I want to write but I don’t write, using all sorts of victimy excuses. Or I think maybe I should give up writing fiction altogether, like I did last night.

 No wonder I reacted so strongly to Jeff Goins’ piece that mentioned giftedness. I fear I don’t have it. I’m afraid I’m going to put in all the work and use all that precious time I could be using doing other things I enjoy and don’t mind I’m not gifted at, like sewing and cooking, then get another emotional slap in the face at the end of it.

The funny thing is, the ten year old me isn’t afraid. I thought the fear came from her, but it doesn’t, it’s from some other part of me. maybe from protective parent me. Ten year old me is fearless. She knows she can write. She wants to write. Making up stories is what she wants to do, more than anything. It’s her favourite game, better than anything. she loves it.

 It’s a crappy lie made up by older me that she only wrote to please other people, that she didn’t do it for herself. She wrote her stories down  in little books and wanted other people to read them because she wanted to write. Because she knew they were good stories. Because she knew that stories are meant to be shared.

 She’s just angry I’m stopping her. She knows she can so it. She’s not afraid of anything. She wants to write.

 Maybe all I need to do is get out of her way.

I feel like I’ve taken a big step on in breaking down the barriers that have held me back, barriers I’ve hidden behind for too long.  Playing it safe gets us nowhere except in a little prison with walls and door and floor and roof made up of self-imposed limitations.

Next thing to look at is the flip side of the fear of finding out I’m really not good enough. What if I find out I am good enough? If my stories get published and read, what then? A whole new layer of fears to hold me back. I am the queen of frigging excuses.

I’ve read about the “onion” metaphor for character conflict, that good conflict should be layered. Peel one layer back and there’s a new layer revealed beneath it. It does seem to work like that. Clear one block just to find the next one, right there.

I must be the biggest onion in the world!

And then there’s another fear- what if I peel back all the layers and there’s nothing inside. Just a hollow empty shell. All you get inside an onion is- more onion. The biggest what-if of all. what if under all this- there’s nothing. No real person to live authentically.

I’m grinning because that’s a crazy fear, and yet it’s genuine. What if there really isn’t a real me? Maybe the onion metaphor isn’t quite right. Maybe the better image is the prison one.

It’s a prison with multiple layers of walls and doors. So breaking down one level or unlocking one door just brings us to another wall, another door. There’s the outside thorny hedge. Then there’s the moat, with crocodiles. then there’s a high stone wall. then there’s metal bars. then there’s the tiny boxy cubicle the person lives inside.

I live inside.

So safe. So small. So trapped.

I know there is a real me in there somewhere, yet I don’t know her, because I’ve never let her out of that prison. she’s certainly going to be pale and weak and puny, she’s been stuck in there so long. she won’t be able to walk at first, that prison was too small to exercise. the light will hurt her eyes, she hasn’t seen the sun for such a long time. she won’t know how to make decisions and choices for herself, because she hasn’t been allowed to. She’s strong, she’s got to be, but it will take her a while to grow into her strength.

She’s going to need some looking after at first. Then she can start doing the writing she longs to do. Wild writing, free writing, writing that feels and goes deep and is bold and fearless and reckless. Writing atht jumps off the cliff to prove it can fly. Writing to give me back the colour and smell and taste and feel my work has been lacking. Editor Mind thinks too damned much, and is scared to feel.

So- how do you know who you really are, inside all the layers? How have you made your own prison? How are you breaking out?


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Taking responsibility for why I don’t write

Photo by break.things

I’m still not writing.

So as an escape hatch to stop me feeling guilty about that, I’m questioning if I “should” be writing at all. Questioning whether I have any talent. Questioning if keeping on trying to write for publication is worth the effort.

At least I’m being honest about my reasons. For too long, I’ve blamed so much else in my life for me not writing. My husband. My job. My parents. No room to write. No time to write. No peace and quiet to write. I’ve got angry with the people around me and the circumstances of my life for stopping me writing.

What I’m really angry with is myself for not writing.

I can’t make any of those external factors the scapegoat for me not writing.  That’s bad for my husband, my happiness, my productivity, and my karma! If i don’t write, that’s my responsibility.

 Not my job or my husband or my head cold or the tiny house or anything else. Me.

 The big thing about growing up is taking responsibility for what truly is mine to take. Not feeling responsibility for things that aren’t down to me. Not blaming anyone or anything else for what really IS my responsibility.

 So me writing or not is down to me, no matter what the circumstances are. If I’m not writing, it’s because I am choosing something else. Maybe that choice can be justified, maybe it can’t. What matters most is acknowledging- it’s my choice.

 Not in an accusatory blaming-the-victim “You chose this” kind of way. More of an ”If you don’t like it, what can you do differently next time to change things?”

No matter what the situation, there will always be some choice I can make. It’s hard to imagine likely situations where there wouldn’t be. Being kidnapped and taken hostage, okay, all I can choose is my attitude. But in most everyday situations, I have a choice.

I did it to lose weight. I stopped trying to lose weight, which I’d been doing without much results for a couple of years. Instead, I just did it.

There is no try- do, or do not. Or something like that!

Anyway, it’s so true. Eighty pounds in two years, from a UK size 22 to a UK size 10. 

I had to choose to exercise more and to transform how i ate, not once, but many times a day. Walk rather than take the train. Eat this apple, not that cake.  Eat this salad, not that garlic bread. Say “No” to a second glass of wine (or even a first glass). Over and over again.

 The secret is to keep choosing, and make the choices easy. If I pack a salad lunch to take to work, I won’t be tempted to buy a less healthy meal. If i have lots of fruit and nuts and healthy snacks with me, I don’t need to go near those cakes and biscuits in the office kitchen. If I want to be slim more than I want to eat this chocolate, I know what to choose.

Reinforce the benefits of the positive choices, and don’t beat myself up if now and then I choose differently. 

In fact, if I do choose to eat something I “shouldn’t”, I need to make sure I truly want it and then savour every bit of it and celebrate my freedom to choose. Choosing differently every once in a while  only reinforces the truth- everything is my choice.

 I did it for weight loss, I can do it for writing too.

I need to stop trying to write, and get doing it instead. I need to know that writing is a choice I can make, a gift I can give myself. It’s not another dreary have-to on that neverending to-do list.

Yes, I need to set things up so I have no excuses. It’s my job to get systems in place that give me time and space to write. But first I need to know that writing or not writing is my choice.

I can set up work patterns to give myself time to write. Getting up before my husband on week day mornings is one. Going to the coffee shop for two hours a day on days off is another. Simply getting into consistent work patterns even here at home so Arthur knows when I’m not to be disturbed will help. Encouraging him to get out more, then making use of that time will help too.

There’s a lot I can do to change things. If I want to. If I choose to.

It starts with changing myself. Being real. Taking responsibility for myself and my life. Dropping the blame and resentment, and accepting what is my choice and what I can change. Recognising that I can have some but not all of what I want. Working towards creating what I want rather than demanding it all happen at once. 

Most of all, being a grown-up about my writing, not that hurting ten year old girl whose heartfelt gift of a hand written book was rejected. Hug the ten year old me, love her and tell her she can so write. But don’t let her keep making my choices for grown-up me.

Only just in this moment do I realise how much power that ten year old still has in my life. No wonder it’s been hard to feel like writing.

It’s time I chose to grow up. Time I chose to give this everything I’ve got, because I love to write and I want to write. And because to have the stories she loved to write read by someone else was what that ten year old most wanted.

It’s up to me to make that happen.


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Letting go of being a Victim

Let go of your story, so the universe can write a new one for you.
Photo by Alice Popkorn

It’s time I let go of being a victim.

Yesterday’s post made me realise just how much I still am acting as a victim of my parents and my unsupportive upbringing. It’s one thing to be aware of it so I can let go of limiting beliefs, it’s another thing to keep blaming that for what I am not doing, using it as an excuse for not achieving my goals and my dreams.

When I was in my teens, blaming my parents was possibly valid. in my twenties and thirties and forties, less so. In my fifties, definitely not!

For all those years, my parents haven’t been the one’s holding me back. Right now, when that little voice whispers to me that I shouldn’t try or I should give up because I’m not really any good at this, it’s not them saying that. That little voice, sometimes nasty and belittling or sometimes sweetly pseudo-protective, may sound like them, but it’s not.

It’s myself, my internalisation of all the things they told me about what it means to be talented and how if you don’t have talent, it’s safer not to try. If I’m a victim of anything, if anything is holding me back now, it’s my own thoughts and beliefs.

I’ve been the one limiting myself. I’ve been the one holding myself back. I’ve been the one telling myself I shouldn’t do this or that because I’m no good at it and I’m not talented enough and if I’m not gifted in that area why bother. I’ve been the one who’s let my fears stop me writing, painting, creating. I’ve been the one stopping myself from putting what I do create out there by not submitting stories or subbing part finished work too soon.

I’m the only one who can change this. I can change the way I think. I can be aware of my self-limiting beliefs. I can listen out for my self-talk, the place where I stop myself living creatively and authentically, and gently but firmly counteract that.

All change starts here, in me, in my heart and in my mind.

But oh boy, this has such an emotional charge for me. It’s all very well for me to logically and rationally think this stuff, but inside me is an angry hurting little girl who is sick of being suppressed and told she’s no good at what she wants to do and doesn’t want to be stopped doing what she wants one minute longer.

I just exploded with rage at my husband and ended up sobbing. He’s interrupted me several times during my morning pages and I’d responded to him rather than asking him not to interrupt, because I’m aware I can block him out sometimes and not give him the attention he needs. Then it got to the stage where I really knew I needed to focus or I wasn’t going to get anything real done. I asked him not to interrupt me for a while because I needed some quiet time to write.

Fine for ten minutes, then he interrupted me to ask me to tell him when I was done with my writing so he could ask me something then!

He genuinely didn’t see that was an interruption. Which is okay, that’s a key difference in how the Asperger’s mind works. What I really reacted to was the justification. He kept going, justifying how it wasn’t an interruption

 My feelings kicked in. Anger, hurt. A sense of disrespect for my writing, for what’s important to me. Fear that this is how it’s always going to be, impossible to get any time for myself, ever. I lost it, and before we knew it we were in a full blown scene, me being over-emotional to the verge of hysterics and him being hyper-rational to the verge of being Mr Spock.

Didn’t help anything. He still doesn’t understand that what he did was an interruption. I can’t understand how he can’t see that. He can’t understand why I reacted so emotionally, I can’t explain it in any rational way.

The benefit is that I now can’t avoid knowing just how much emotional charge there is attached to this for me. It’s clear that dropping my Victim mentality isn’t something that can be done intellectually. There’s a thinking component to this, yes, but that visceral reaction showed there’s an equally strong emotional component too.

My emotional self (right brain, where the Inner Child and the Muse hang out) gets benefits from being in Victim mode. I get to do Poor Me and throw regular pity parties. I get to have excuses, and avoid putting in the work and maybe needing to confront that actually, I really am not any good at some of the things I want to do. I get to throw tantrums, like I did today. But that comes at a cost.

The price  is - I need to keep being a Victim. I can’t be happy. I can’t achieve anything. I stay stuck. I can’t change anything because I keep blaming external circumstances for my life being the way it is. My parents, my husband, his mother, our finances, my job, society, the government, anything else beyond my control.

Because the things that really impact on my life aren’t beyond my control.

It’s time to grow up. Time to take responsibility. Time to stop hiding  behind excuses. Time to find some other way to nurture my Emotional Self besides letting her keep on being a sorry-for-herself Victim. Time to truly acknowledge and get at the deepest level that I chose this. There’s not one thing in my life now that I haven’t chosen, in some way.

There’s a quote from Marianne Williamson. “Let go of your story, so the universe can write a new one for you.”

It’s time to let go and take the risk of living a genuinely authentic and creative life.


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Keeping on writing, gifted or not!

Photo by Le Petit Poulailler

Ever read a blog post that makes you instantly want to unsubscribe from the writer’s blog?

I reacted like that to something I read this week.

It was in Jeff Goins‘s email newsletter, a piece on the two essential ingredients for success. I don’t think it’s on his actual blog, or I’d link to it.

The piece started off great, all about passion and practice being the only things one needed to be a success. I can agree totally with that.

Then he lost me. Because he slipped in a third thing- giftedness.  

Now this irks me, because a damaging belief in talent and giftedness (or not) stopped me doing a number of things I really would have liked to persevere in until I developed some skill. My father used to say when any of us kids tried something new that if we had a gift for whatever it was, it would come easily.

Now, that probably is true, but it’s not enough reason to go on to his logical next step to discourage us- if it doesn’t come easy, by definition you don’t have talent so you should give up.

That, I no longer believe to be true. Honestly, if it was, most of us wouldn’t be walking or reading or able to drive a car. 99.9% of us would have to give up everything at the first attempt.

But when I was younger that false belief made me give up on a lot of things I maybe would never have been perfect at but I could have had fun with. Playing a musical instrument. Painting.  Throwing pots. It stopped me writing for years.

It’s a deeply damaging and unhelpful belief.

 A better belief could be – if it’s something you want to do, something you love to do, don’t worry if it doesn’t come easy, keep practicing and see how good you can get. Being immediately good may not be a predictor of long term success at something anyway. too many highly talented individuals burn out young anyway. The hare had the talent for running, but the tortoise won the race.

The main catch I see in this concept  of giftedness is- how do we know if we have this mysterious “gift” or not? Do we have to wait for someone else to tell us? Is it something we should just know? Is it that if something is hard work, we aren’t naturally gifted? Tell that to musicians who practice eight hours a day!

I feel uncomfortable with the whole concept of labelling some people as gifted and others as ungifted. It discourages those labelled ungifted, and puts a heavy burden of expectation on those labelled gifted. Or the “gifted” become complacent, stop trying to better what they do, just like the hare in the fable.

Maybe we never give up on the things that are our true love. I’ve come back to writing.

But I look at my friends whose writing is way better than mine, published or unpublished, and I wonder. Are they actually naturally more talented, or were they just encouraged more, did they somehow have the belief in themselves that kept them going? It would be easy to look at the rejections I’ve accumulated in the four years since I came back to writing and deduce that I have no talent and should give up.

“Do I have a talent for this?”  and “Am I any good at this?” are the wrong questions to ask ourselves.

Do I want it? Do I love it? Does doing this somehow fulfil me in a way nothing else does? Have I improved since I first started this? Those are the questions to ask when we feel discouraged, feel like giving up.

And hopefully, the answers will be Yes, and Yes, and Yes, and Yes.


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Doing Without Doing – but will I get more written that way?

Photo by Zen Natural Cleaning

I’ve done no writing for two weeks.

Morning pages, yes, I’m on a roll with those now and I got at least 750 words every day, though some days they were evening pages not morning pages! No real writing though, no story words apart from one paragraph.

I’ve been in Australia again, this time on a planned vacation with my husband, only six weeks after I got back from my last unplanned trip because of my mother’s illness.

Well, she got sick again!

The night before we got on the plane she needed readmission to hospital and we went straight from the hospital to the airport. They discharged her that day and she’s stayed fairly well since, but it’s a worrying situation. She and Dad both have chronic health problems now that can’t and won’t get cured, only managed, and will progressively worsen. Hard to be on the other side of the world. I’m hoping she’ll be more active in self-managing her condition now, signs are good that she will now, but I also know it’s inevitable I’ll need to make another emergency flight out before the end of this year.

Aging must be so hard. Accepting that one’s health is on the decline, that living independently may soon no longer be a realistic option. Even harder as Dad’s dementia comes complete with total denial that there is any problem.

Anyway, despite the parental concerns, we had a wonderful journey. A big focus in my journal pages was being with what is and living in the moment. I’ve always tended to short change the present, too tied up with either resentments from past events or with rushing headlong to a future I hope will somehow be better, too stressed by the pressure of my to-do list to enjoy right now.

I recognise I need to slow down. Be totally with what I am doing now, not doing it with only half my mind because the other half is frantically doing its hamster-on-a-wheel imitation worrying about a zillion other things. Start enjoying what is good about the present moment, not stressing about what needs to be different.

That sort of  Zen mindfulness is very much what I need.  I’ll certainly be happier living that way. And I can’t help thinking that paradoxically, I’ll get more done that way too.  There’s a  related Taoist principle of wu wei, which means “do without doing” or effortless doing.

Wu-wei refers to behavior that arises from a sense of oneself as connected to others and to one’s environment. It is not motivated by a sense of separateness. It is action that is spontaneous and effortless. At the same time it is not to be considered inertia, laziness, or mere passivity. Rather, it is the experience of going with the grain or swimming with the current. Our contemporary expression, “going with the flow,” is a direct expression of this fundamental Taoist principle.

What I’ve been doing, pushing boulders uphill trying to write what I don’t want to write, has only made me resistant  to writing.  It’s made me feel stressed and a failure because I haven’t yet achieved my goal of making money from writing.

Mindfulness would switch that around. Not coming to it with a focus of look-what-I-haven’t-achieved. Just be with the writing now. The reality is, I have achieved, plenty. I’ve learned a lot. I can see how my story telling skills have developed over the past few years. I’ve actually written a truckload of words, had many good ideas,  and started a lot of projects, I just haven’t followed any through to full completion.

I’m seeing now that’s not just writing “The End” on the first draft. It’s not even editing and rewriting and polishing until I know the story is as good as I can get it. It’s publication which completes the loop and is the true finishing. Stories are meant to be read. The finish is when someone else reads the story.

That’s an interesting realisation, and it helps me understand more why writers choose to self-publish. It’s not necessarily an “I’m going to get my book out there and it will sell loads of copies and make me lots of money” thing. It can be an “I’ve written this story and now I’m putting it out there to be read because that completes the creative process.” By that definition, self-publishing an ebook that sells six copies is still a success. I like that!

I’m still going the route of submitting to publishers first though. One, it’s a lot easier. Two, there’s more to be learned that way.

First, I need to write a story! So I need to get back into my everyday life and pick up the routine again. I also need to stop stressing so much and just let there be space for writing in my life. A lot of my sense of busy-ness comes from stress caused by my push-push-push attitude.

I want to see how different it can be when I cultivate a more relaxed attitude. Might even get some more writing done! certainly, I’d enjoy it more. It also means stopping chasing “opportunities”. No writing things just for Fast Tracks or contests or Calls for Submission or “I just heard that Publisher A is looking for stories about B”. Time to stop chasing publication as a goal. It’s not the right goal. The goal is to write the stories that only I can write.

I’m not clear enough yet on what my own natural writing voice truly is, because I simply haven’t given myself the opportunity to write naturally enough to find out. Doing all these other things have given me some good story ideas and good practice on writing to a requirement, but have also got in the way of me discovering that most basic need.

So, on the flight back to England last night, I thought about what story it is that I most want to write. I know I need to pick one story to play with and stick to it until the project gets done. No matter how zen or tao I get about the actual writing process, I must hold myself to this. I can’t let it be an excuse for more grasshopper mind.

Self-discipline and wu wei aren’t incompatible!

So I took some time to think what I most wanted that one story to be and came up with a surprising answer. Not one of the stories I thought (with Editor Mind) I should be working on. Far from it.

What I feel most excitement and sense of play about writing is the first person sweetish ST version (possibly with some magical elements) of  a secret princess story I first drafted as a Book in a Week back in 2009. It will probably turn out too quirky to ever be at all saleable, but it’s a story that’s been nagging at me for years to do properly.

The first draft is about as crappy as it’s possible for crappy writing to be! It was supposed to be a Presents, started for one of those first chapter contests on I Heart Presents (before Mills and Boon started New Voices instead) but all these other elements kept creeping in. Then I edited those out to try to make it fit Presents, but it just didn’t work. Really, really,  REALLY  didn’t work! Goal-less characters. No real conflict. Lots of external conflict I kept chucking in to make up for the lack of emotional heart.

Interesting to just now really truly realise that. It wasn’t just the lack of internal relationship blocks that I thought was the problem, it’s that my characters weren’t emotionally real. Their responses to the situation weren’t real. They were cardboard people jiggling on strings I pulled in time to stupid unmotivated plot moves. I read this post on Emotional Core by Chuck Wendig - profanity alert- on the plane, so it’s put it big in my mind. Like it should be.

Anyway, ever since the Presents quite-right-too-100%-justified rejection debacle, I’ve wanted to write the story the way it wants to be written, no trying to push it into any particular mould. I think I can have fun and learn a lot doing this, though it’s highly unlikely I’ll produce a marketable story. What the heck, that’s not the be-all-and-end-all. I’m here to play, not make money.

I’m kinda hoping that once it’s done I can settle down and write all those other far more sensible books!

Maybe I’m not supposed to write sensible saleable books though. Maybe writing is just going to be a hobby for me and not a career. Maybe I’ll always have to keep working as a nurse to pay the bills and writing will be what I do for fun. Maybe that, rather than the “Got to get published so I can start earning money so I can give up nursing” approach I’ve had will be more helpful.

I’m feeling okay with that. Pushing myself to write more more more of what I resisted writing has got me nowhere. I want to see where just treating it as a big game can get me. I’ll be happier and more relaxed, that’s for sure. Which is a win even if I do end up self-publishing and selling just six copies.

So fun and playfulness here I come! Okay, disciplined fun, but it’s still gonna be fun. I hope. My Editor Mind is going along with it, in hope I’ll actually write more this way. He’s found the resistance a PITA, too.

In unrelated news, I’m planning to change the blog around a bit. I want to add more of my other creative interests. Mainly my (mis)adventures in sewing and crafting, in growing things to eat, and in concocting weird raw vegan messes in my kitchen. Not sure if it will work to have a hodge-podge of writing, sewing, cooking, and gardening or if it will wind up like bad soup with too much thrown in the pot, but I want to give it a go. Probably more in a learn-from-my-mistakes way than anything else.

I’ve been looking at some awesomely polished crafting sites. Like glossy magazine pages, honestly. Scary.

My blog will NOT be that!

Happy writing and creating today, whatever you do!

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