I am so grateful for shared wisdom.
The other day I was having a tough time. I couldn’t focus. I got nothing done. And I had a LOT that I wanted to do.
So I asked two circles of writerly knowledge and friendship that I’m a part of for advice. One was my local writer’s group. One was the 12×12 facebook community.
And I’m so glad that I did.
I had friends empathize and listen. Laugh at the idea of having a time with no interruptions (this is very rare for parents with children at home), but still encourage me to try and find it.
I was advised to be aware of fears that might be holding me back. At first, I thought this didn’t apply to me. This is a personal endeavour, after all. But then, as I went to work, I realized how much I was hesitating because I was worried I didn’t know what I was doing, I didn’t know how to draw, I didn’t know how to make a book, and so on. These perceived obstacles loomed larger and larger and became an almost unscalable mountain. Until I remembered this bit of wisdom about fears and said, ‘Fahghedabowdit” (that’s my attempt at a written Italian accent…). Don’t worry about those worries. Do what you can. Baby steps if you must, but most importantly, don’t stop stepping.
I was asked if I had any accountability partners. Aside from sympathetic writing friends, I don’t. I’m not at the point in my life where I feel I could be a reliable accountability partner for someone else, and thus don’t feel like I can ask someone to do that for me. Yes my loved ones would not hesitate to jump in, but they would also let me off the hook pretty easily too, because of that love thing. So, instead, I’m trying to post regular work on this blog and social media. Not exactly the same as an accountability partner, but it is a more visual commitment, anyway. So far so good!
I was reminded of the power of a timer. I have tried working for short sprints before. 15-20minute bursts are perfect. Then I set another timer to get up and move, where I clean or go for a walk or break up a fight 😉 .
I was encouraged to make a deadline. This sounds good, but the inner toddler in me rebels strongly against my own imposed deadlines. If someone else sets it, and it’s important to them, I will jump over the moon to make it. But for myself, I’m much too forgiving and understanding when I tell myself I don’t feel like working.
So instead of a deadline, I determined a focus.
I had to keep it simple. Anything complicated would soon be forgotten.
So I typed this up:
This schedule and chunk of time commitment has transformed my life. There are three areas of story creation I’m developing and working on right now:
Character Pics and Learning. I want to learn to illustrate picture books. This includes online classes (mostly from SVSlearn.com right now) and creating some simple art pictures like the, ‘Animals with Verbs!’ series.
Picture Book Work. To help with that picture book illustration learning, I want to start illustrating a story I wrote. No it won’t be perfect. That’s okay. I still think this will be a fantastic learning challenge.
Story Writing. The weird thing is, I don’t picture myself as a picture book writer, even though I have a bunch of stories and am learning to illustrate them. In my heart, I’m a fantasy writer. Weird, right? I have a few books that are calling me to write them. And giving me this focus time at night has felt amazing. We’ll see what happens, but I’m VERY excited.
Even if all I get is 5 minutes on that task, I still feel like I have honoured my self-learning and growth. Thankfully, I actually seem to often get more like an hour or two for each endeavour, tucked in around mothering, cleaning, gardening, cooking, and other fun learning.
I hope by sharing this that I can, in some small part, share some of the wisdom that was shared with me.
For working together, we are stronger <3