Reading and Writing

It’s really late to be writing my morning pages. I’ve read and read this morning. It is the kind of reading which makes you want to write. I can’t walk away from this keyboard now after having read these wonderful pieces. I read about Hillary Mantel. A face book page called Writers shared a feature article about her. About how crazy and lovable, how sensitive and how cold. The article was written in the www.newstatesman.com. On the outside a quiet lovable, interested lady. On the inside a driving force of real and surreal ideas cramming her brain to be let out. Her real life sufferings forming and shaping who she is and driving her imagination. I loved the article. I felt as though I had been to her apartment to meet her and had found in her a kindred spirit, reciprocated by her. I couldn’t pull my eyes from the page and read more quickly so to be finished in time to wake up Chloe. Alas, I let Chloe sleep in but finished reading the story. Inspired I kept scrolling and found an article by Lev Grossman, How Fatherhood Ruined His Life Plan and made him the Writer He is Today. Excerpted from “Daughter Pressure” by Lev Grossman. Several things he said resonated clearly with me. Experiences from his childhood and the crumbling of the shell he had grown around himself as a result, due to his relationship with his brand new daughter. It was a wonderful read and completely inspiring. I just can’t walk away from my morning pages now. So even if it is nearly nine o’clock in the morning and today has not only school in it, but also a couple of loads of laundry, clothes to put away and some to iron first, bread to bake and all the usual cleaning up and straightening including an overall vacuuming ending with home made pizza and a movie, morning pages it is. I’m actually really quite good at making up time. I’ve had a lot of practice due to an insufferable capability for procrastination. I’m normally slow and methodical and then click, boom, I’m freaking everybody out because I just got focused and aim to accomplish a ton in the remaining time or bust. I’m really feeling not too bad. My mind seems to be doing the best lately. I noticed on my morning walk around the chicken coops and subsequent search for the dog that my mind is not rebelling at being up at the crack of dawn any more. I was recalling how I wouldn’t bring the dog with me because, of course, she would wander off and have things of her own to do. It would irritate me no end to have to make my body walk the extra steps to go and find her. It’s not like I could holler for her either. My voice didn’t use to work in the mornings. She wouldn’t listen if I did holler. Those memories come from a time when neither my body nor my mind felt well. Now at least my mind feels well and I’m bringing my body along and it is also liking the experience very much. I am able to talk to the chickens and the ducks. The roosters stop their crowing to listen to my soothing talk. My voice isn’t scary to them in the mornings any more. I remember opening the coop door once as they came out in a rush, happy to be let out into a new day and saying “Good morning” in my very bad morning voice. Suddenly they all stopped and ran back in. I was sorry I had tried to greet them. But now my voice is awake, soft and comforting in the mornings and I can talk to them without fear of frightening them back into the coop. I’m actually enjoying my morning stroll even the part where I go looking for the dog. I feel refreshed and ready for the day when I get back. Sometimes I have finished my writing sometimes I still have more writing to do. Morning pages were supposed to be unedited, quickly written, badly spelled, enlightening pieces designed to wake one up. I am having trouble writing that way. I recognize errors as they happen and I can’t seem to move on without going back and correcting them. I keep reading what I’m writing so I have to make adjustments. Really it is turning out to be more of an exercise in writing. I also have a hard time writing anything which may be negative about my life, even my over-eating habit is difficult to talk about in a negative way. I think it’s best to focus on stuff that is great. I do love what I cook. I love what I’ve grown in the garden and that I’ve figured out a way to cook it. I end up loving it and eating too much of it. I also can’t bear to throw it away, since I grew it and cooked it and all that is a lot of work. I love that I get to home-school our daughter and that we both love to write. I’m often listening to the keys on the other computer clacking away. Every once in awhile I hear satisfied or happy noises coming from her direction when she is writing. Like she just wrote something really good and is enjoying it. I love that she uses big words in her writing and nothing she writes makes any sense. I love that I get to garden and that I have a greenhouse now and a cold-frame and plants all around which are either pretty or producing food or both. I do like the dirt, I don’t care for spiders and grasshoppers. There are plenty of hard work aspects to gardening and home-schooling but writing, even though it can at time exhaust one, feels only like play. I love that about writing.  

Written by Elizabeth Williams, writing exercise, morning pages.
1,000 words.

The Library

I’m sitting here at my computer, in my home, feeling fairly safe and private. I do a Google search to find an answer to something we were wondering about yesterday. I find a lot of options in the search and choose one and then another. I make a note of the helpful stuff and save it for later. I may even print it out if it’s important enough to keep. Then I move over to Facebook. I always do that now. It’s just part of the whole internet thing, now-a-days. To the right side of the main body are a list of ever changing ads. I don’t usually pay attention to them but this time there is one on the exact subject I just did a search on. It’s Google. It’s everywhere on the internet.

I love the internet for the ease of finding information. When the older kids were young we didn’t have the internet. The internet was becoming available as the kids got older but when they were young it was the library. We had several dictionaries in our home and some encyclopedias. I taught them to look something up if they didn’t know and to be sure about what they thought they knew. If we needed to know more, then it was the weekly trip to the county library. The first library we went to in our town was in a very old historic building with rooms full of books, a sitting area, tall narrow windows and a reception desk in the center room. It was full of books and crowded. The town had been working on plans for a new library for years and had finally come to an agreement on the whole project. The plans were posted at the old library and at the new library building site and posted in the daily paper. It was an exciting time in our town. Our family was also excited. We followed along with the progress.

Finally the day came for the books to be moved to the new building. Many of the books in the old building weren’t important enough to move so they had a sale and the kids and I went down there and bought as many as we could afford. Of course I had to go home and build a bookshelf to hold them all. We were at the new library for its opening week. It was beautiful. Large open spaces and plenty of light. The children’s books were on short shelves which you could see easily over and the lounge area for the kids was colorful and imaginative. We loved it. I could browse books of interest to me and watch the kids. I was interested in books about writing. Just in case you were wondering. All the other books we took home were children’s books which I loved as much or more than the kids. Not all the books we checked out were fiction. There was so much we wanted to know. There were books about places in the world, boats and planes and plants and animals. We found books about times in history. We read all the books we could. Sometimes we read books all day and most of the night. We often fell asleep reading.

Now we have Google, or Bing or other. I use Google. I can google from the computer or a device like Kindle, i-phone, as long as I have Wi-Fi. We can check different sources and print things out. One can go for hours referencing and cross referencing and finding out stuff. Amazon is always on standby. Have you noticed that? Whenever I come across a book about a subject, Amazon is there with a ‘buy now’ button. Prime members can have ‘one click’ service. No need to verify your purchase because you are a Prime Member. It’s quite risky. I’ve clicked on something to see more about it and next day there it is at my door. Of course, now I know that you have thirty minutes to cancel if you made a mistake. That is if you realize what you did. Buying books on Amazon is the easiest thing. I had to have Mark build me some shelves.

We have been using Google but this year we have decided to get back to our library routine. We did that when Chloe was younger but stopped during an unusually busy and stressful time. We have just started fourth grade. Fourth grade is the beginning of bigger stuff. We are going to need the library. We are excited about it. I’m hoping that their won’t be a sidebar on facebook reflecting our library browsing decisions. Hopefully there won't be any pop up bill-boards all the road, trying to sell us something because of our research choices. I have noticed that too on the internet. It all seems to be connected. Everything you look up or research on the internet has with it a whole industry. You innocently look up something to do with tomato diseases and you find answers. Lot’s of great answers. Some of them really useful. But then of course their are the books you may need and Amazon is there to help you with that. Then there are the industries. Ads about tomato cages, special gardening techniques, boxes and special watering systems, dirt analysis kits, seed packets, companion plants, chemicals and organic solutions. Help for the study of the moon and stars in relation to your tomato plants. All the animals and bugs and all the equipment needed to keep them away, trap them or delete them. These things pop up, slide across, invade the facebook news feed, fill your spam folder in your email. I looked up something once which had to do with health. Goodness me, I got so tired of that ad with the fat tummy and the big secret. Every time I tried to do something there it was. Sometimes it was moving, sometimes it was cut open so I could see what it looked like on the inside. I’m really hoping this does not happen with the library. With every thing becoming so modernized, I’m hoping that the library is still that same quiet, respectful, non-advertising peaceful place it always was, where information and adventure await you quietly from within the silent shelves.

Written by: Elizabeth Williams, daily writing exercise, 1,054 words.

My Blog

It’s the first day of August and this marks the end of the first three weeks of my 1,000 words daily exercise. I have really enjoyed this and I plan to continue to write 1,000 words a day. I don’t always blog what I write, sometimes I do if I think it would be interesting to anybody. It isn’t great writing, it’s just writing. I haven’t been writing long enough to have great writing. I don’t spend long enough with each piece to have it qualify as great. Usually I sit down to write, open my program and just start writing. I let myself discover what is on the inside. I think this is important because it gives me an idea as to what is on the inside. It also gives me the chance to let my brain flow. Sometimes I start with one thought and end up with a completely different one with several other thoughts in the middle. Usually when I have struggled through the start of a piece I look at the word count and it says 155 or something. I immediately think that that’s nothing yet and I’m running out of words. What will I write about for 850 more words. I keep going and after awhile I check the word count again and it’s around 750 words. Now I’m thinking that I better get to the point and tie things up because I’m running out of words. But the words keep coming and I keep typing. When I’m finished tying things up I check the word count and it’s way over 1,000 words, so I read through and start cutting. I find other mistakes in spelling or grammar and quickly fix them. I take out repetition and unnecessary rambling until I’m really close but still over. That’s all I do. Then I post it to my blog and share it on my face book page. Now if I want to write something really good or even great, I would put a lot more time into it and choose words carefully and go over the outline in more detail. I would take longer with it, but since it is meant to be a sample of free flowing words I just let it be. Recently I found this paper with ideas for weekly writing to share on my blog. It is by: DIY Author. I printed it out and I really liked a few of the ideas. One is to serialize a whole story. That is a cool idea. Another one is to write micro fiction. Just little stand alone stories, 1,000 words. Most of their ideas were great. I like having a map for stuff. Sometimes it just helps. At first when I started my blog I was all about setting it up. I did it carefully, needing it to reflect me. Then it was ready and it was so clean and nice but completely empty. I wasn’t sure what to put in it because I didn’t want to mess it up. I want to encourage anyone who wants to write to just go for it. Start posting stuff. Start getting your words out there. Start a blog and write for it. Don’t worry about audience yet. Start publishing your words to your blog. It is great practice. It is best not to start off with a huge audience because that is a lot of pressure. Once you get the feeling that someone is reading what you wrote then you have to deal with that feeling. You will have that. You will be so grateful that someone actually took time to read all those words. The thing is you have just got to start. In three weeks I have changed from being a private writer to being a self-published author. You know you are considered published when you post to your blog. Strange how easy that was. It has nothing to do with money. It has only to do with your writing being where anyone can pick it up and read it. Some of the other things on this list are; sharing excerpts of work you are currently doing; telling the story behind the story, or revealing where you came up with the idea; Q&A with characters in your book or series; interview authors who write similar to you; share and review new books in the same category as yours; make lists of books similar to yours; invite your readers to ask questions and have Q&A time. The are more, it’s a pretty awesome list. I like the first one, ‘serialize a whole story - 1,000 words at a time’. I will still write 1,000 words a day but not always post them. Sometimes I will be rewriting and planning the next step in a story. I’m also working on a children’s book, illustrations and all. Sometimes you just have to do it. You wonder for years if you could, if you should, then one day you just have to go ahead and do it. Perhaps I’ll write a serialized story once a week, a micro fiction once a week or other kind of story and do a book review once a month. A book review will require a library trip on my part, which is something I would like to get back to doing. I would like to feature other writers from time to time but that will take time to figure out. These are some of the plans I have for my blog. Unlike most other venues in business, there is not much competition among writers. No two writers are exactly the same and there is always room for more. It’s the more the merrier in this field. What is important is the quality. One writer inspires another and in inspiring is inspiration. I have received emails from well-known authors encouraging me to write and keep writing until I break-out and then, keep writing.

Elizabeth Williams, daily writing exercise, 1,000 words exactly.

Reading

One thing I have been thinking about is that there are some people who don’t read. It’s not that they can’t read. But they just don’t, unless of course they have to. They have to read the road signs and such or they may not know where they are going. Some reading is required in order to maneuver around on the Television Set. Computers require some reading. Sometimes a lot of reading. If you go to shopping sites like Home Depot for example, you will need to read stuff. If you go to the actual store you will still need to be able to read. So it’s not entirely that they don’t read. These kind of people will never read something just for the pleasure of reading. But they do read. Magazines are picture books and they only read text if it applies to a picture and helping to explain it to them. These people do not read books, whole entire books with no pictures just for fun. Sometimes these people are the doers in our society. People that are always taking care of things and can’t bring their bodies to a stand still unless it’s bedtime. There are such people. They are always moving. Sitting down to read a book would not be a pleasure for them. This kind of person might view such a thing as unpleasant and unnecessary mental exertion. For them there is only one world, and that is the one in which they are involved. My husband is this kind of man. I remember when he had to read for school. Of course his books were 10 inches thick. I couldn’t even lift them. He would open them on the floor of the living room. Then he would read. Not all of it. He would be turning the pages. We were all quiet because Daddy was reading. No Body is quiet because Mommy is reading. Ever. He had several of these books. He stacked them in the corner of the room. They would have made a great table. He got his diploma, passed with the highest scores and the books disappeared. I saw one such book in the garage once. He may have referenced it. Outside of the phone book and on-line stores and the occasional how to use on a can or bottle, or instruction for a new appliance my husband does not read. Ok so he reads for instructional purposes only. I on the other hand, well, what can I say. I love words. Any words. All words. When I was growing up it was like a contest with me to see how many words I could devour in a day. Words were made to be read. All words must be read. The entire cereal box. The label on the back of the fridge. The words inside of clothing. Every single word in sight of a road we were driving down. Every book I could get my hands on. The Bible. I could not get enough of words. My daughter Chloe is the exact same way. Of course words must be read out loud when you are young. I loved books. Chapter books. Books of all genre’s. Some genre’s were unacceptable in our home when I was growing up. These books must be read in the night under the covers with a flashlight. I don’t remember my mother being an avid reader. My mother is a practical person who is always doing. My father was a book person. He created with words. He remembered words of great authors. He gave me a love for writings the likes of Kenneth Grahame, William Shakespeare, Charles Dickens and CS Lewis. He recited poetry of the greats and he was mysterious in his knowledge of these things. It drew me in. I have done some traveling in my life. Parts of Europe and North America, the British Isles and Scandinavia. I have a limited exposure to other parts of our world. I have met many people from so many different walks in real life. But I have been further and seen so much more through reading. I have lived in ancient times and deep into the future. I have experienced through books much more than I ever could in real life. Reading a book is not the same as watching a movie or documentary. Reading a book is entirely personal. Taking you through words into worlds you would never have dreamed possible. Your own mind making up the pictures as you go. The pictures being more emotion than color. I have buried myself in books before. Losing consciousness to words. At times I have absorbed so many words that my body would be in shock. Especially in the overload of information today. You can get on facebook and completely overload your systems with too much information. You can do that with your email too if you are like me and sign up for all the newsletters. My email inbox is always flooded with emails. Hundreds of emails. My husband on the other hand barely gets any. I actually have to send him an email every couple of months just to keep his account active. I have to choose now what I will read and what I will not. I have to set limits on the whole reading thing and only read the important stuff. I do get to decide what’s important though so that’s good. I use a standard with myself now. Does it weaken me? If it weakens me then I don’t read it anymore. If it takes away from my creativity then it is weakening me. Too much reading of the wrong information is weakening. Some reading is inspirational. Some is depressing. Some reading is information that is not needed at this time, clogging up the brain and causing concern. This stuff makes you worry and takes focus away from what is needed at this time. I’m just learning about this. I’m in the creating with words mode. I read all the stuff that inspires the creation of worlds through words. Other peoples creativity through words and pictures. That inspires me, instructs me, energizes me. I can’t imagine living without books. Without reading books. My husband is learning this about me and bookshelves are beginning to appear. I fill them as quickly as he builds them. I would love to have a home with every wall a bookshelf. My worth being measured in the number of awesome books I own. Someday my own books will be mingled together with the books on my shelves and perhaps grace a shelf in your home as well.

Elizabeth Williams writes 1,000 words a day.  This page is 1,110 words.