Holding Fast - ROW80 Check-In

 

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 3 2023

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

Abbie Emmons Motivational

I thought I would 'cheat' a bit with this post and save time by not trying to write my own essay above the GOAL check list.  I thought, Why not share a motivational video that would also introduce one of my resources online, a writer and vlogger whose specialty is two fold: Inspiration and How To.

So much for a time-saving cheat tho.  I've already spent longer than I usually do on composing these check-in posts because I've spent at least two hours scrolling through hundreds of video thumbs and watching several while looking for the ones I hoped to share.

Abbie Emmons is a self-published author whose third book is coming out this fall.  I think her first two easily fall into the the genre Romantic Comedy.  100 Days of Summer and it's sequel The Best Christmas Ever.  I thought I'd reviewed the first one but I can't find it.  The source of my memory could be either it is one of the unpublished drafts that don't have an identifying title, or it is in one of my note or word processing files also without an identifying title.  The kind of thing I might do when what I'm working on is rougher than a rough draft--a collection really of notes and quotes and biblio details, links and images and blurbs and bios.  When I was posting reviews regularly I would collect those minutia while I was still reading the book and then creating the post was a matter of plug and play.  Another place my 'review' could be is inside one of the read-a-thon posts.  That just occurred to me but this is not the time to squirrel off to check out that thought.  But I have a good idea where to look first as I was reading it in early 2020--just before or just after the onset of the pandemic shutdown.  Which was about when I lost my mojo as my life crashed around me.

Anyway.

Abbie Emmons' third book, The Otherworld, sounds like it could be another RomCom but possibly with literary aspirations.  I suspect this because of comments she has made about it over the last several years as she worked on it during the write-ins she occasionally hosts on her channel. Another thing I love about her channel.  The write-ins.  I find it soothing to listen to the sound of typing and if I'm sitting here holding my own hands over my own keyboard while I listen it isn't long before I'm clickity-clacking right along with her.

I am especially anxious to read The Otherworld because it is set in the state where I grew up and now live.  Tho I've never been to one of the islands off the coast of Washington state that hosts a lighthouse I have childhood memories of exploring the Puget Sound area with a great aunt who lived in Tacoma. 

But that isn't the only reason I'm so wanting to read this one.  My main reason is that the protagonist was raised on one of those lighthouse islands by a uber protective father who won't allow her to be exposed to 'The Otherworld'  by which he means our modern culture on the mainland.  This I'm sure will find resonance with my own experience of having been raised in a cult. 

I wasn't isolated on an island nor even on a compound.  I went to a regular public school but the isolation was created by 6 to 10 hours of Bible Meetings or related group activities per week along with the 6 or 7 hours of related activities performed as a family at home all enclosed by a structure of hundreds of taboos against exposing ourselves to contamination from the 'outsiders' aka 'the world'.  One of the worst things that could be said of one of our group was that they were 'too worldly'.

Imagine giving your novel's protagonist the whole world and the entire culture of their birth the role of villain and antagonist?  In this scenario there is no success, no safe place to land in one's lifetime.  It is all out there to serve as obstacle, temptation, ensnarement and punishment. 

My own storyworld came into existence as the sandbox in which I tried to work out what had happened to me after I had flipped the script on my own life story in my late 30s when I concluded that the world was not my enemy the doctrine was.

Well.  That was a tangent I was not planning to take in this post but I guess I will let it stand. 

I just wanted to share one of the writer resources that I enjoy on several levels but especially whenever I need reassurance that my dreams as a creative writer are worthy even if 'wordly'.  But Abbie Emmons is also very good at all the minutia of the how-to from story structure, character creation, and world building, to outlining, writing, rewriting, editing and self-publishing.  

Her favorite question is: Why does your story matter?  And she encourages us to answer that for ourselves for if our story doesn't matter to us or we don't consciously know why it matters we can't make it matter to anyone else.  The second vid is one of many that touches on that theme which is the the theme of her channel.

Abbie Emmons on How to Stop Comparing Yourself to Other Writers

Note: I discover4ed while going after links to the titles above that the books are tagged as YA.  I don't want to take the time to edit so I'll leave the caveat here.

 ROW80 Round 3 Goals:

• Morning pages daily.  Average 40 minutes (ala Julia Cameron The Artist Way and Writing For Life) YES In fact I just passed a milestone by filling the first spiral notebook.  70 pages both sides.  Started May 20.  Probably would not have jumped into NaNo and ROW80 without having had a month of morning pages behind me.
• Storydreaming with notebook for noting ideas for characters or scenes. (ala Robert Owen Butler From Where You Dream)  30 minutes per day TWICE since Wednesday  (Until about ten days ago, lots of storydreaming. No notebook.  I'd misplaced the one I used to use for this and was reluctant to start a new one but I think I need to be less fussy.  The notebook is the key to this goal as without it the storydreams go to the same place night dreams go an hour after waking.  I found the notebook. So.  No excuses left.)
• Working on the Fruits of the Spirit (aka FOS) Storyworld Bible at least 30 minutes per day at least 5 days per week.  I'm sure this will expand as I get involved but I need to set a minimum for that jumpstart. 3X since Wednesday (with pain level back to normal background hum and the Reverse Thon in the rearview I will make this and storydreaming the high priority for the rest of Camp NaNo.  They are the core after all.  The rest are support.  Well Camp NaNo is over in 24 hrs and i'm not going to hit the milestones I pictured no fulfill the 11K word count I established in my Camp NaNo project specs but I'm still pleased with the start I've made and the storyword bible will continue as my ROW80 main project for the remainder of this round.  Oh I just realized that the 2x I reported last Wednesday plus the 3x I just reported add up to 5 which is actually a fulfillment of the stated goal of at least 5x a week.)
• Weekly Artist Date (ala Julia Cameron)  This is about doing something to recharge your creative battery.  I'll go into more detail in one of the check-ins. NOPE 
• A minimum of 5 minutes of physical activity.  Either a walk outside with my caregiver or a session on my mini-tramp, or pacing the floor between front and back door. YES (may need to look at upping the expectation soon.  this is getting too easy)
• I want to reengage with my blog so: Two blog posts per week besides the two check-ins. One about encountering other people's stories via print, video or audio which can include formal reviews.  The other about a current fiber art WIP or about one of my personal challenges: widowhood, independent living with visual impairment and autism and issues related to health and aging among them.  NOPE  (I've continued to choose reading over blogging.  I've been finishing 2 to 3 books a week so there is plenty of fodder for reviews. I think the main hurdle is my personal issue with transitions (part of my high functioning autism) it is hard to change the channels in my head which translates to: hard to switch from awake to asleep and back again.  hard to switch from dry to wet and back (think swimming and showers). Forgetting to eat and then forgetting to stop eating.  Really it is any activity including topics on my mind. Except for reading NF books.  For some reason I'd rather read one chapter each in ten books in one sitting then read ten chapters in one book.  Odd that.  I wonder why switching channels is preferablein hat one instance.  Is it just the fact that it is all reading and uses all the same neuropaths and I don't have to get up and move to another location but even if I happen to I can still switch to a different book without a glitch?  These are not idle questions.  This is an example of the self-reflection I've talked about in earlier posts.  Questions like these often lead to insights I can plug back into my life in another context and increase my success.

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Holding Steady - ROW80 check in

 

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 3 2023

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

I think I broke my insight machine.  The last two weeks and thus for most of the check ins this round I  have featured one or more aha moments.  Some of which knocked me for a loop. 

Today I'm just feeling MEH. 

There is one insight. Maybe>  But it doesn't feel electrifying.  Probably because it is old hat.  Rehash.  Something I keep having to relearn.  Again.  Again.  Again.  Ugh. 

It has to do with clutter.

As I mentioned in the goals post where I posted pics of my workstation, almost everything in my 400 sq ft unit has to do double duty.  Or better.  My desk is no exception.  Various parts of it are used for many different tasks throughout the day and the related items if not regularly put away accumulate in layers.  When the layers get deep enough they are unstable.  Things get lost. 

When I approach my desk with a task in mind and see the mess I often turn around and find something else to do.  It is demoralizing to have to use the time allotted for a task in cleaning up after the last several tasks.

This probably sounds like, DUH.  And it is pretty much what it feels like too. 

I guess it is an insight but it has come back around so often it's worn holes in its knees.  But I know it is probably the most significant issue keeping me from fulfilling my daily 30 minutes on the storyworld bible as that project requires spreading out papers and notebooks and note cards and markers and tabs and sticky notes and book marks and.....  Well, you get the picture.

I can do the storydreaming with notebook anywhere and the blog posts just need a square foot of space for the laptop and another for the mousepad.  And since it is always set up it is always ready to go.  But the two components of my 8 foot desk--the rolling cart with board and the rolling table--comprising nearly 6 feet of it usually look like an archeology dig after one day of use for meals, paperwork, morning pages, reading notes, grocery lists, and todo lists, minor repairs and mail opening leaving behind ripped envelops and packaging misc. and pens and pencils and notebooks and papers needing tending to jewelry and devices and earbuds and water bottles and coffee thermos and spoons, and magnifying glasses and reference books and reading glasses, tape and glue and voter's pamphlet and dead batteries and fidget toys and and and and and ad infinitum. 

I don't have a solution right now I'm just wallowing in the dismay.  My only insight is that something has to change. 

And it is after midnight so technically I missed check in.  Sigh. 

ROW80 Round 3 Goals:

• Morning pages daily.  Average 40 minutes (ala Julia Cameron The Artist Way and Writing For Life) YES In fact I just passed a milestone by filling the first spiral notebook.  70 pages both sides.  Started May 20.  Probably would not have jumped into NaNo and ROW80 without having had a month of morning pages behind me.
• Storydreaming with notebook for noting ideas for characters or scenes. (ala Robert Owen Butler From Where You Dream)  30 minutes per day TWICE since Sunday (Until last Thursday afternoon, lots of storydreaming. No notebook.  I'd misplaced the one I used to use for this and was reluctant to start a new one but I think I need to be less fussy.  The notebook is the key to this goal as without it the storydreams go to the same place night dreams go an hour after waking.  I found the notebook. So.  No excuses left for Wednesday checkin)
• Working on the Fruits of the Spirit (aka FOS) Storyworld Bible at least 30 minutes per day at least 5 days per week.  I'm sure this will expand as I get involved but I need to set a minimum for that jumpstart. TWICE since Sunday (with pain level back to normal background hum and the Reverse Thon in the rearview I will make this and storydreaming the high priority for the rest of Camp NaNo.  They are the core after all.  The rest are support.)
• Weekly Artist Date (ala Julia Cameron)  This is about doing something to recharge your creative battery.  I'll go into more detail in one of the check-ins. Not yet.  Hoping Tomorrow 
• A minimum of 5 minutes of physical activity.  Either a walk outside with my caregiver or a session on my mini-tramp, or pacing the floor between front and back door. YES (may need to look at upping the expectation soon.  this is getting too easy)
• I want to reengage with my blog so: Two blog posts per week besides the two check-ins. One about encountering other people's stories via print, video or audio which can include formal reviews.  The other about a current fiber art WIP or about one of my personal challenges: widowhood, independent living with visual impairment and autism and issues related to health and aging among them.  Not yet this week.  Still time  (I've been in recovery mode from last weedend's Reverse Readathon but i've been contemplating taking my brief comments about the Romcom novel I read Friday night that I made in one of my thon updates and expanding them into a full review.)

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Progressively Plodding - ROW80 Check-In

 

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 3 2023

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

With more full YESes and two partials that were once flat NOs I can congratulate myself on steady progress.  The biggest progress of all is the ability to see these small steps forward as bright possibility lighting the way forward rather than see the failure of a perfect goal fulfillment as a boulder about to land on my head.  Or proof I don't belong on the path at all.

This check-in marks the first time I've been able to say I've done work with the two goals that are the core of my current project: storydreaming with notebook and working on the storyworld bible.  It is not a full YES for either yet as they are daily goals and I just started Friday.  Dabbled at that.  But it IS a start.

I see where I made choices that effected the outcome.  Some of those I will now recognize more clearly in real time and maybe make a different choice.  But some, like choosing to set aside the writing goals to join the Reverse Readathon, I accept guilt free as I know I'd make the same choice again as readathons are a competing priority for me.  Maybe if I had an actual set publication date and participating in a thon would mean missing a hard deadline that discombobulated more than me, myself and I... Well then, that might cause me to choose differently.  But with difficulty and extreme disappointment.

Making it easy to give priority to a readathon is my belief that reading feeds the fire that fuels my passion for words and story.  Reading is also my favorite teacher of the craft.  Sure, I read regularly anyway but reading in a thon has layers of other benefits.  Including community. But one large benefit for a writer is exposure to a lot of titles and authors that you might not have encountered anywhere on your regularly traveled paths.

Valuable for writers in a readathon is also the potential to network, the glimpses of the market from a less curated angle, and encounters with other writers who are readers.  And the Dewey thon was once followed by publishers, editors and agents pushing their wares and testing the waters but I get the feeling these last several years that has tapered off.

One of my takeaways this week is comprehending the role the other goals on the list have.  They are not negligible nuisances nor frivolous fillers to give me easy YESes.  They are part of the foundation and structure that supports and encloses my efforts in the craft itself--from research to drafting to rewriting to editing.  And I know that without them, nothing but dreaming ever gets done.

I had this insight when I realized that those supporting goals were now quite easy to fulfill and immediately saw that the fact I had actually dabbled in my storyworld again was directly related to the presence of those other activities in my daily routine.

I may need to add a few more of them eventually but I know better than to overwhelm myself with too much after such a long hiatus especially knowing I now have challenges I didn't have when I was going strong.  I won't be adding any this month and will likely wait until next round.

Meanwhile, I'm going to bask in this pleasing feeling as I acknowledge my real progress.  Plodding though it may be.

ROW80 Round 3 Goals:

• Morning pages daily.  Average 40 minutes (ala Julia Cameron The Artist Way and Writing For Life) YES
• Storydreaming with notebook for noting ideas for characters or scenes. (ala Robert Owen Butler From Where You Dream)  30 minutes per day TWICE (Until last Thursday afternoon, lots of storydreaming. No notebook.  I'd misplaced the one I used to use for this and was reluctant to start a new one but I think I need to be less fussy.  The notebook is the key to this goal as without it the storydreams go to the same place night dreams go an hour after waking.  I found the notebook. So.  No excuses left for Wednesday checkin)
• Working on the Fruits of the Spirit (aka FOS) Storyworld Bible at least 30 minutes per day at least 5 days per week.  I'm sure this will expand as I get involved but I need to set a minimum for that jumpstart. TWICE (with pain level back to normal background hum and the Reverse Thon in the rearview I will make this and storydreaming the high priority for the rest of Camp NaNo.  They are the core after all.  The rest are support.)
• Weekly Artist Date (ala Julia Cameron)  This is about doing something to recharge your creative battery.  I'll go into more detail in one of the check-ins. YES (went to visit an hour or so with my 91 year old mom and went shopping for the Thon food. Which, if you ever participated in Dewey's 24 Hour Read-a-Thon, you know can be a very creative and muse stimulating endeavor.)
• A minimum of 5 minutes of physical activity.  Either a walk outside with my caregiver or a session on my mini-tramp, or pacing the floor between front and back door. YES (may need to look at upping the expectation soon.  this is getting too easy)
• I want to reengage with my blog so: Two blog posts per week besides the two check-ins. One about encountering other people's stories via print, video or audio which can include formal reviews.  The other about a current fiber art WIP or about one of my personal challenges: widowhood, independent living with visual impairment and autism and issues related to health and aging among them.  YES!!!  (I put up the first of two posts Tuesday about getting my reading mojo back and announcing the Reverse Readathon this weekend and of course I blogged the thon from Friday at 5PM until Saturday at 5PM )

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My Brain On Books XXXIV - Reverse Thon

   

 

 

I am reading for The Office of Letters and Lights the folks who bring us NaNoWriMo today as I love what they are doing for literacy with their Young Writer's Programs and because I've participated in NaNo every year since 2004.  I have been blessed to have it in my life and would like to give something back if only kudos and link love.  I'm putting this plug at the top in hopes some who stop by will check out their site and see all the great things they do to foster love of reading and writing and story in kids. 

This post will be organized like a blog inside a blog with recent updates stacked atop previous ones. I may be posting some updates on Twitter @Joystory and the Joystory fb fanpage. But this is where I do anything more than a line or two.  Including mini-challenges that don't require a separate post..   

Be sure and see my tribute poem to Dewey and the Thon she birthed at the bottom of this post

Meet My Reading Buddies:
Grace and Jolly
They are my sleep buddies and live on my bed but today they join me on my beanbag reading nest

5:22 PM Saturday - Reading My Own Stories
That was a surreal experience.  I targeted the two stories that were the inception of the storyworld.  They both can stand alone but are intended as chapters one and three of the novel The Substance of Things Hoped For. Combined the reach close to 30,000 words.  The first is 6K and the second is over 20K. And yeah with only one hour I made it only thru the first and about 4K into the second.

I'm not sure how completely I succeeded in this experiment in disassociation, of stepping outside the creator, writer and editor of these stories in an attempt to encounter them as I would any story.  But I find it a good sign that I reached that coveted immersive state in which it feels more like a dream and when it is over you don't want to wake up.  I woke up wanting more and felt sad knowing the 'more' existed only as outlines, musings. character sketches and scrambled rough drafts of scenes out of order.  But that feeling also feels like hope.  The kind of hope that can motivate.

Here are links to the opening scenes to the two stories I'm referring to:

Of Cats and Claws and Curiosities: Part One
Making Ragdoll Babies and Million Dollar Maybes: Part One 

The links for continuing each story if motivated to do so are provided in the posts.

Well that wraps up the 2023 Reverse Thon for me.  Now I need to write my Sunday checkin post for ROW80.

3:11 PM Saturday - The Last NF of the Day
Just spent half an hour listening to two chapters in Becoming Heroines by Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin. Not the official audible version in which she is reading it herself but listening to the Kindle robot. That's the one I listed in the intro meme as the NF I was most looking forward to reading.  And I almost forgot.  Well, not forgot.  I kept putting it off because I wanted to be more alert.  This is a book I've been advancing my bookmark through slowly over more than a year because there is so much to digest in each chapter.  I'm finding it helpful in two profound ways.  The first is the one most likely intended by the author.  Which is to develop transformative insights into one's own history (especially surrounding trauma) and distilling from them profound lessons that can be applied going forward toward creating the WHO you were meant to be.

The second way I find this book helpful is probably unintended by the author but it feels natural to me to take the insights about character, motivation and choice at the heart of her advice and apply it to the characters that walk on the stage of my stories.  Especially the women and girls but even the males who have been subjected to trauma inflicted by those who use and abuse their power.

This book is helping me understand what makes me tick and that influences how I think about my storyworld characters and their motivations.

Well there is only an hour left now and I've decided that is not enough time to devote to the novel I listed in the Intro Meme as the fiction I was most excited to read for the thon.  The Catholic School by Edoardo Albenati is one of those bricks.  It is over 1200 pages.  The midpoint of the thon was when I intended to settle in with it. After I finished the Romcom.  But I spent the middle 8 hours struggling to stay awake, succumbing to sleep and then swamped by sleep brain so it never felt like a good time to tackle a very serious minded novel.  And now there isn't enough time as I can't afford to get sucked in too much past 5 as I need to write the final update and then write the Sunday check-in post for ROW80.

So instead I'm spending the last hour with my own stories.  Not in the electronic files tho but with handful of completed short stories in hard copy most of which are intended as chapters in one of the novels in my Fruits of the Spirit storyworld.  I am going to try to encounter them as a reader instead of as writer or editor.  I want to get a sense of how they live in the storyverse.  I don't know how much sense that makes as I'm really struggling to put into words what I'm about to try to do:  To read my stories as a reader and  connoisseur of stories.

1:44 PM Saturday - It Was More Than a Nap.
I slept for 5.5 hours from 4:30 until 10.  I was slow to wake up and getting back to the reading was more important to me than updating this.  I did a bit of browsing in several NF but I didn't stick with any long enough to read a whole chapter so I'll not bother listing them.  I guess I was looking for one that was compatible with my morning mind which is still a little bit dreamy and distractible.  A novel might have actually worked better for that.  A lightweight novel.  But that is what I spent the whole first ten hours with yesterday and I was hoping for more meaty stuff today. 

Well I finally settled on How to Write a Novel Using the Snowflake Method by Randy Ingermasnon.  I guess since it is written a bit like a parable it reads more like a story than a typical how to.  And I think I'm finding useful suggestions for my own project for Camp NaNo that involves creating a story bible for the storyworld I've set two dozen stories in.  Well actually it will be more helpful in the next step after the story bible is created and I'm ready to address the plot issues and story arcs.  But Ingermason's method does talk a lot about the character sketches which are one of the main sections of the story bible and now I have a clearer idea of what kind of info I need to include in those sketches.

Not sure what I'm going to pick up next.  I'm hankering for another novel but If I go that route I'll probably stick with it until the end.  Not that that is a bad thing. It is just that I was hoping to advance my bookmarks in several NF books.  I had a blast doing that in over 20 NF in the April Thon.  But it seems I'm just not in much of a NF frame of mind today.

I probably won't update again until 5.  This eats into reading time.  So the mystery of what I spend the last three hours reading won't be revealed until after the finish line.

3:55 AM - Finished First Book about 2:30...

Then read a chapter in a Libby book that was due in ten hours and put it on hold and returned it early.  That was Quantum Supremacy by Michio Kaku. I may have to re-read that chapter when I get my next turn in several weeks.  Sigh.  I'm fading.  Have been awake for 28 hours.  I think I need to listen to my body and take a nap.  The law of diminishing returns is in effect.  The longer I read the slower I read.  The last 30% of that novel took twice as long as the first 30% even tho I listened to the whole thing being read to me by the robot at 2X.  I was just unable to sustain it without getting up and moving around frequently to stave of the drowse.  I think I also need to pay attention to the fact this has stopped being fun.  I am hoping that I will wake up refreshed enough to continue when my normal 8:44 alarm goes off.

11:22 PM - Still With First Book.  Now at 60%
I think I'm in it for the finish line.  I don't do one sitting reads very often anymore.  I guess I should let the robot read to me more often.  At least in books where language usage, diction and perfect pronunciation are not crucial to a meaningful encounter with the story.  I'm am not just sitting there passively though.  I am actually following along with my eye altho imperfectly.  But unlike when I'm reading with only my eye I do not backtrack.  Something about this exercise has increased my reading speed when I do turn the robot off.  For awhile I am reading much faster than normal.  Tho not nearly to the level of the 2X natural human speaking that I am listening now.

I was hoping while doing the 8:22 update that I would be finished with the book by midnight but I ended up dealing with a pesky computer glitch that prevented me from accessing my files so I could upload the bookcover.  So I didn't get back to the book until after 9 after initiating a restart and walking away.  I didn't place the book cover until just before starting this update.  But the first thing I did after sitting down here and getting back on the desktop was to delete 90% of my downloads file and empty my recycle.  I have a sneaking suspicion I'm running out of storage space on this 7 year old laptop.  Tending to that needs to go near the top of my priority list.  Just not this weekend, Please!

Well.... Back to the story.

8:22 PM - 3 Hour Sprint!

So I just now came up for air.  I've been reading the novel I started with the whole 3 hours.  Rather I've been letting the Kindle robot read to me at 2X because my caregiver put my dinner plate in my hand as she walked out the door at 5.  Crab melts.  Yum!

The Book?  The Overdue Life of Amy Byler.by Kelly Harm. I needed an easy read (as compared to Tolstory say, or David Foster Wallace) for the first one and wanted a Romcom and what better for a read-a-thon than a novel featuring a school librarian as a protagonist?  I've had this borrowed from Prime Reads for months and am now wondering what took me so long?  It is laugh out loud funny.  And I'm nearly at 40% after 3 hours.

4:44 PM - Intro Meme I'm setting this to go live at 4:44 PM but it may be well into hour 2 before I check in again.  I'll be joining the first sprint with my first pick sitting in my beanbag chair nursing a Kombucha and eating a sweet or salty treat.

1) What fine part of the world are you reading from today?

Kelso Washington USA.  Across the Cowlitz river from Longview where I grew up and had been living with my elderly mother between January 2013 and late July 2021.  I moved into my 400 square foot efficiency unit in late July 2021.  This  post was a photo essay of my new space.

So this is my sixth thon in my own home, counting the Reverse Thon in August 2021.    I completely spaced out the August Reverse Thon last year and was so sad when I realized it.

2) Which book in your stack are you most looking forward to?

Non-Fiction: Becoming Heroines by Elizabeth Cronise McLaughlin

Fiction: The Catholic School by Edorado Albernati

3) Which snack are you most looking forward to?

i'm having real trouble picking a fav because for the first time in years I got to go shopping for my thon snacks and I really went a bit over the top, getting both sweet and salty snackies as well some healthy treats like fresh fruits.  But it is intended to last past the October thon into the holidays tho (except for the fresh fruit of course).  But if I HAVE to choose--I guess the first fresh watermelon of the year.

4) Tell us a little something about yourself!

• Widowed September 2020  It still smarts at unexpected moments.  But at least it is usually only several times a month now instead of constantly.  But September brought it back to several times a day.  September was his birthday and the anniversary of his Mom's and my Dad's deaths as well as his.  So it was still a rough patch two years out.
• Living alone for the first time ever.  Just passed the 2nd anniversary of move in day.
• Legally blind with RP aka tunnel vision.  Have only a sliver of vision left in center of right eye.  The rest is shadows and shimmers.
• Have struggled with mood disorder of Anxiety and Depression since grade school
• Diagnosed with high functioning autism in 2015.  In my 50s!
• Have a caregiver who comes in five days a week to help with chores and errands I can't do alone.
• I proved during this move that I have more volume in fiber art supplies than in clothes by at least thee times.
• I probably have double the volume of clothes in tree-books but since I still haven't got them all moved over I can't be sure.

5) If you participated in the last read-a-thon, what’s one thing you’ll do different today? If this is your first read-a-thon, what are you most looking forward to?

This is my 34th thon so there aren't many variations I haven't tried. Reverse Thons are especially challenging for me as it starts many hours after my last sleep and this time I woke at midnight after only 5 hours and couldn't get back to sleep before it was time to prep for my day of appointments and chores.

Doing anything but especially reading or writing for a full 24 hours used to be my superpower but not so much anymore.  Now that I'm in my mid sixties the price I pay for that self abuse is significant as all my systems are less forgiving. 

Also hope to do a better job than in the past of staying hydrated and getting up to move regularly.

I may be reading more than usual with my LOC talking book machine and BARD my library of congress talking book android ap as I am working a crochet project with an early July deadline: two lacey baby blankets for a set of twin girls and don't want to loose two days effort.  This was from the last Thon and still holds as I'm about 3/4 on each and the Twin's were born on July 1st.

And for this thon I"m going to spend at least one hour reading my own stories as part of my Camp NaNo and ROW80 fullfillment so I don't have to mark a task as undone on my goals list.  ROW80 is a writer's accountability community that gives you a NaNo like challenge and accountability community year around.  Definitly worth checking out if you are a writer as well as a reader.

Ode to Dewey

by Joy Renee

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We Miss You Dewey

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Giving Myself Kudos - ROW80 Check-In

 

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 3 2023

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

I am at the moment managing to fight my natural inclination to see failure at one part as failure of the whole.  But if I squint at it, I can see there has been incremental progress towards the goals.  But more important than those baby steps is the resilience I've shown by getting back up and pressing on even after an actual physical fall.  In the past I would have seen that fall as proof that my aspirations were born of pride.

"Pride goeth before a fall." 

That was one of both my parent's and both of my Mom's parents' favorite aphorisms aka Bible verses.  So that was drummed into me in childhood and I took it to heart.  So much so that every setback and every obstacle I encountered after stepping outside the box sent me cowering back inside for days or weeks or months or years.  And if the event was an actual physical fall--well there was no way and no point in trying to argue with God's word, right?

This is the first time that I didn't just fall or jump back into the box and stay put after a setback.  This is the first time I was able to hang onto the dream and stand back up and turn my back on the box and choose to neither give up nor hold myself to the high expectations expressed in my intentions.  I was able to both keep the goals list intact as aspiration as I allowed for the natural fallout from the fall to take its course and learned to see the small triumphs as proof that I was on the right path while the failures, instead of looming as ominous signs of impending judgement on my pridefulness, were like small shadows cast by pebbles.

I cannot overstate how HUGE this is.  This is monumental.  This means that I have managed to deconstruct one of the many doctrines that my infant mind was programed with, one that was reinforced daily for over 30 years.  The absence of the feelings of guilt and unworthiness that used to follow these setbacks is an astonishing thing to observe.  It is like probing for that rotten tooth that was there as you fell asleep but upon waking you find only empty space where there had been mind numbing pain.

So that is what I'm giving myself kudos for along with the successes reflected in the goals list below.  The two things in that list that I have yet to give any time to are calling to me tho and if not for having committed to the read-a-thon this weekend I'd state my intent right here to attend to them before Sunday check-in.  But I don't see a realistic path to do both the thon and spend time in my story files or storydreaming.

Unless.

Ummm.  Is this too much?  Could I spend a couple hours of the read-a-thon reading my own stories?

Hmmm.  I need to let that percolate for a bit.  But the fact that I did not immediately dismiss it as hubris asking for another knock down is immensely profound.

ROW80 Round 3 Goals:

• Morning pages daily.  Average 40 minutes (ala Julia Cameron The Artist Way and Writing For Life) YES
• Storydreaming with notebook for noting ideas for characters or scenes. (ala Robert Owen Butler From Where You Dream)  30 minutes per day NOPE (Lot of storydreaming. No notebook.  I misplaced the one I used to use for this and was reluctant to start a new one but I think I need to be less fussy.  The notebook is the key to this goal as without it the storydreams go to the same place night dreams go an hour after waking)
• Working on the Fruits of the Spirit (aka FOS) Storyworld Bible at least 30 minutes per day at least 5 days per week.  I'm sure this will expand as I get involved but I need to set a minimum for that jumpstart. NOPE (still having residual neck and shoulder pain from the fall that is triggered by sitting at the computer for more than a few minutes at a time)
• Weekly Artist Date (ala Julia Cameron)  This is about doing something to recharge your creative battery.  I'll go into more detail in one of the check-ins. YES (went to visit an hour or so with my 91 year old mom.)
• A minimum of 5 minutes of physical activity.  Either a walk outside with my caregiver or a session on my mini-tramp, or pacing the floor between front and back door. YES
• I want to reengage with my blog so: Two blog posts per week besides the two check-ins. One about encountering other people's stories via print, video or audio which can include formal reviews.  The other about a current fiber art WIP or about one of my personal challenges: widowhood, independent living with visual impairment and autism and issues related to health and aging among them.  ALMOST  (50% there as I put up the first of two posts yesterday about getting my reading mojo back and announcing the Reverse Readathon this weekend and of course I'll be blogging the thon from Friday at 5PM until Saturday at 5PM so on Sunday's check-in I'll be able to say a full YES to this)

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My Reading Mojo is Back

Library Lust

Along with my writing mojo, I've got my reading mojo back this year.  On the last day of June I tallied up all the books I'd finished on all my devices since the first of the year and it was 45.  I've finished several more since then.  Making that list was the first step to targeting some for reviewing and then gathering my thoughts for them.  Maybe I'll share that list in a future post but it is handwritten and a mess.

But meanwhile I've been luxuriating in book lust by browsing on goodreads, amazon and youtube.  I was introduced to Leaf by Leaf book vlog a few weeks ago and can't get enough of him only I have to make do with his archive as he went on a summer hiatus.  The video tour of his library featured above just makes me swoon.

It also makes me sad for the books I lost in moves or had to sell as I was well on my way to having something that looked very much like that a couple decades ago.  Not as pretty but nearly as crowded.

Some of the sadness tho is about the loss of my vision to the point that reading tree books is too much like first grade---sounding out syllable by syllable.  I can still do it if I'm desperate because I need that particular book and can't get it in either ebook or audio.  But I can't get lost in the story reading that way.

More than just my reading mojo, I got back my BIG book mojo.  I read two in the month of June and that inspired me to start making a list from my notes and my memory and from browsing goodreads of as many BIG books as I remember ever having read or wanted to read. I added several to my TBR pile from Leaf by Leaf videos directly about BIG books.

I had just been marveling that I really had not stopped reading since the last Dewey Thon in April.  Not 24 hours a day of course but easily 4 to 8 hours per day on average which was up from around 2 hours a day with occasional missed days.  So I was delighted to find in my inbox the announcement that the summer Dewey Reverse Thon is on this weekend.

The Reverse Read-a-Thon starts the clock 12 hours early which allows those who usually start between dinner and bedtime a chance to experience a start in the wee hours or at least before lunch while still feeling rested.  Thus I, who usually get to start at 5am Saturday, must start at 5pm Friday. 

Sigh.  Hard to be well rested enough to make the whole 24 without a nap.  Plus my caregiver doesn't leave until 6 this week so unless we get everything important done early enough I can send her away by 5 I will have to start late.  But Hey!  It's a Thon.  And it's ON

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Giving Myself Grace -- ROW80 Check-In

 

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 3 2023

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

I didn't readjust my goals after the fallout from last week's fall.  But I did readjust my expectations, thinking it might be more motivating to see a couple 'NOPE' next to a few goal items for a week or two than the sense of complete failure of the project if I were to eliminate the goal.  I will re-assess next weekend.

Truthfully, I think the pain fallout from the fall last week is now minimal and I probably should have given at least one of those tasks a try both yesterday and today.  My excuse was that I was OCD on that baby blanket crochet project.  The twins were due on the 13th but were actually born on the 1st.  I had set this weekend as my finish goal and that goal took a hit from the fall as well.  But I was already behind before the fall.  Sigh.

I might have had time for both the crochet and the NaNo and ROWer goals today if I hadn't slept until 11 am waking into a room already registering 80 degrees as I forgot to shut the windows the first time I got up after dawn.

I had also slept 11 hours so was dehydrated and trapped in dreamworld for hours after I got up.  Morning pages took me nearly an hour instead of the usual 35-40 minutes.  Yet I was grateful for the sleep as I'd become quite sleep deprived after the pain cycles from last Monday's fall prevented me from catching up after the marathon post prep sessions last weekend.

I believe it is an aspect of my autism that I remain trapped in my right brain for hours after waking.  The longer I slept the longer it takes for language and logic to come online.  'Trapped' is not the word I would choose if societal expectations did not make communication such a MUST so that from my earliest memories there have been oodles of shaming associated with it.

Because I actually like that morning mind.  Because that is when I feel the most Me and that is where my stories are born.

Also when language and logic come back online so does anxiety.  And so does My Stella.

Overall I'm OK with how I did this week in light of the fall.  Not exactly pleased but I'll give myself a C.  Most of that for not giving up entirely.  Some of it for the insights that have helped me give myself grace and note where minor adjustments to expectations can possibly have big results.

For example: Why do I assume in that picture in my mind of accomplishing a daily goal that it has to be done in one go?  Both of the goals that involve potentially long computer sessions could be done in smaller bites until I regain my stamina.  Even if only to get up and move for two minutes every fifteen minutes.  Two minutes is not enough time to switch the channels in my brain so that I risk loosing the momentum or even forgetting to return to it because my attention has been swallowed by another project.

These attention issues are another aspect of my autism.  I have extreme difficulty transitioning from one task or topic to another.  But once engaged in a task I tend to stay with it until it is finished or something forces me to stop.  Physical limitations as I age no longer allow me to stay engaged in a single task for the 12 to 24 hours that were common in my twenties and thirties.  But 6 to 10 hours are still common since I moved into my own place two years ago.

So my takeaway is that I need to start imagining myself accomplishing the goals in ways that might look and feel different from how I used to do it.  Imagining is where it all begins for me.  I am a visual thinker.  That doesn't quite say it either.  Visual yes but visual like a hologram ala Star Trek rather than a still image.

ROW80 Round 3 Goals:

• Morning pages daily.  Average 40 minutes (ala Julia Cameron The Artist Way and Writing For Life) YES
• Storydreaming with notebook for noting ideas for characters or scenes. (ala Robert Owen Butler From Where You Dream)  30 minutes per day NOPE (Lot of storydreaming. No notebook.  I misplaced the one I used to use for this and was reluctant to start a new one but I think I need to be less fussy.  The notebook is the key to this goal as without it the storydreams go to the same place night dreams go an hour after waking)
• Working on the Fruits of the Spirit (aka FOS) Storyworld Bible at least 30 minutes per day at least 5 days per week.  I'm sure this will expand as I get involved but I need to set a minimum for that jumpstart. NOPE (residual neck and shoulder pain from the fall made it difficult to sit at the computer for more than a few minutes at a time)
• Weekly Artist Date (ala Julia Cameron)  This is about doing something to recharge your creative battery.  I'll go into more detail in one of the check-ins. YES (went to game day at social center of my villa last Tuesday)
• A minimum of 5 minutes of physical activity.  Either a walk outside with my caregiver or a session on my mini-tramp, or pacing the floor between front and back door. YES
• I want to reengage with my blog so: Two blog posts per week besides the two check-ins. One about encountering other people's stories via print, video or audio which can include formal reviews.  The other about a current fiber art WIP or about one of my personal challenges: widowhood, independent living with visual impairment and autism and issues related to health and aging among them.  NOPE  (same as above: working on the computer triggers the pain)

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Falling Short -- ROW80 Check-In

A Round of Words in 80 Days
Round 3 2023

The writing challenge that
 knows you have a life

I may have to reevaluate my goals.  I am currently trying to decide whether I over-estimated my capabilities or let frustrations dictate my mood and thus my choices.  What is reasonable to expect of myself and how do I respond to failure without feeling like a failure and then self-fulfilling that expectation born out of frustration.

I was riding such a high late last week as I got ready to take the plunge back into NaNo and ROWer again.  And I remained on that high as I made my goals list, signed up for Camp NaNo and described my project, did prep work for the ROW80 Goals post  including decluttering my 8ft desk and doing a photo shoot and all the way through writing the post and publishing it.

And then I looked at the published post and discovered there were no paragraph breaks.  I checked the code and the P tags were there and adding another 'enter' at each point did not add a space to the published version.

I was too fried to work in the code and try to find where it was broken.  I'd been writing and editing for hours and it was past dawn and I hadn't slept.  I needed to sleep first.  So I returned to it on Sunday afternoon and fiddled with the code for two more hours.  Finally found a solution that was more of a fudge than a fix as I had to use the 'shift/enter' 'break' and make what looked like an ocean of space between each paragraph for it to show up as normal paragraph breaks on the published page.

By this time my eyes, my brain and my mood were fried.  And I started second guessing myself about the whole project.  I tallied up the time I'd spent on that one post and it amounted to at least 8 hours. 

What?  I just committed to four posts a week.  How could I fit 24 hours a week into my schedule and still have time for the creative writing and the work on the main project for Camp NaNo which is creating a storyworld bible to tackle the overwhelm resulting from having set over two dozen stories in it and never keeping track of all the established facts.

That was the project that had captured my imagination and I'd set a bite sized goal for it of 30 minutes a day to start.  And there I was on Sunday evening too fried to work on it and also too fried to do the blog hop to show my support for other ROWers.

Oh boy! My Stella got loose.  I named my inner harpy Stella after the Stella Mudd character on classic Star Trek about a year ago so I could talk back to her.  It felt silly at first but after several months I found vast improvement in the negative self-talk and then one day I told her "One more word and I'm going to tape your mouth shut."  She hushed for a few days and then she got snarky again and I kept my promise, saying to her "I hope you don't have a cold."

I hadn't heard a peep out of her for months.  Until Sunday evening.

Well I realized that I was sleep deprived and I needed to remedy that before I made any decisions.  Monday was another day.  But I would not be able to work on creative projects until after my caregiver left at five.  Mondays are especially busy with chores after the several days I've been on my own.

So Monday was going better than Sunday and hope was building again.  I even got the walk outside in that was one of my goals.  My caregiver has been helping me practice and memorize the routes to a cluster of benches in front of my unit and a gazebo that is several units away.  The hope has been that I would gain the capability of making those walks alone on days she is not here so that I am not required to be shut inside where after a few days of that my 400 sq ft unit begins to feel like a jail.  Especially in good weather.

I had even started to feel confident about it last week and that confidence got stronger as we finished up the walk on Monday and I was leading the way up my front walk to my front door when I cut the corner and stepped off the walk into the flowerbed and fell out flat on the porch slab.  On the way down my cane jabbed me in the belly.  I'm not sure if it was my belly or my knee that took the brunt but were only two of the points of contact.  There was also my right hand and wrist and elbow.  And since the worst of the pain now over 36 hours later is in my neck I think there was a slight whiplash effect.

I swear I heard Stella laughing til she choked.  And then a clear "Serves you right!  Shoulda listened to me."

The Corner I Cut bottom edge
and the Edge of the Bench up top

ROW80 Round 3 Goals:

• Morning pages daily.  Average 40 minutes (ala Julia Cameron The Artist Way and Writing For Life) YES
• Storydreaming with notebook for noting ideas for characters or scenes. (ala Robert Owen Butler From Where You Dream)  30 minutes per day NOPE
• Working on the Fruits of the Spirit (aka FOS) Storyworld Bible at least 30 minutes per day at least 5 days per week.  I'm sure this will expand as I get involved but I need to set a minimum for that jumpstart. NOPE
• Weekly Artist Date (ala Julia Cameron)  This is about doing something to recharge your creative battery.  I'll go into more detail in one of the check-ins. YES (went to game day at social center of my villa)
• A minimum of 5 minutes of physical activity.  Either a walk outside with my caregiver or a session on my mini-tramp, or pacing the floor between front and back door. YES
• I want to reengage with my blog so: Two blog posts per week besides the two check-ins. One about encountering other people's stories via print, video or audio which can include formal reviews.  The other about a current fiber art WIP or about one of my personal challenges: widowhood, independent living with visual impairment and autism and issues related to health and aging among them.  NOT YET (but still time before week over)

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My Writing Mojo Is Back: Camp NaNo & ROW80 Round 3

 Note: I am aware there are no paragraph breaks in the published post.  I have no clue why as they exist in the editor version.  I will try to figure it out later but it has been a long time since I've tried to read code so I don't know if I will succeed. Fixed! Sorta. Used Shift/Enter to create a break at the end of each paragraph as Blogger seemed to be ignoring the plain paragraph code no matter how many times I hit enter.  Weird.

8 Foot Workstation Viewed from Kitchen Looking Toward Front Window

So I just recently signed my third lease for my 400 square foot unit which made me realize I've been living here alone for two years.  Along with that realization came another--that some time in the last six months the fog of grief and the chaos of the move had lifted.  Proof of that was in the fact that I had both my writing and my reading mojo back.  I'll talk about the reading in a future post.  This is about the writing.

About three months ago I borrowed via the Libby Ap the latest Julia Cameron book Writing for Life and after I'd read about halfway thru I got the itch to try morning pages again.  I've lost count of the number of times I've started that exercise over twenty years and then just stopped after a handful of days.  I'm not a morning person.  But I started on May 20 and I haven't missed a day yet and I started noticing that I wanted more.  That maybe I was ready to engage with my creative writing projects again.  I'll discuss more about my engagement with Julia Cameron's book in a later post.  Maybe when I review the book?  This post is just my announcement of intent.

I know that I always do better with intent when there is some level of accountability involved and the two ways that have worked in the past are NaNoWriMo and ROW80 so I'm taking advantage of Camp NaNo July to create the project and rejoining ROW80 as well.

Right 2/3 of Workstation Showing Wheeled Table and Wheeled Cart

Everything in my unit must be multifunctional and my workstation can not be excepted.  The wheeled table in the middle is also where I eat meals.  As well as write morning pages by hand and fill out paperwork and play Boggle or Scrabble against myself, takes notes by hand from a tree book, fix small items needing glue or tape, make grocery lists.  And much more.
 

This inability for me to keep my writing workspace sacrosanct has been hard to accept and caused many a false starts that were too easily frustrated by a cluttered surface just when I had that brilliant idea.  Slowly though, I've learned to clear the clutter frequently enough that when inspiration strikes I only need a handful of minutes to switch functions.

But now of course it is going to be less about inspiration and more about intent.

The table in the middle is mostly used for writing by hand and meals.  I sometimes roll it around so that I can sit facing the window and then open the blinds.  The cart being on wheels too allows for several different configurations to the workstation but this is my favorite.  When I need more space to spread books and papers out I can set up a board on boxes on the couch and have a wrap-around L shaped desk that adds another 4 to 6 feet of space.

Note the two notebooks atop the wheeled cart.  These relate to my Camp NaNo Project which is NOT another story.  

The notebook on the right, a three ringed binder holds all that exist of the hard copy of my stories.  This in spite of the fact I've been doing Nano and sometimes Camp NaNo since 2004 and ROW80 regularly between 2012 and 2020. As well as JuNoWriMo a number of times. That's a lot of stories.  And last November I noticed that the NaNo site was keeping track of individual's total wordcount on our profile and mine went over a million by the end of the month.  That's a lot of words.   And that doesn't even account for the ROW80 and JuNoWriMo events I joined and for each one started a new 'novel'.  Most of which I've not looked at again since the end of their respective challenge. And all of which would be lost forever if I don't rescue them out of pixel purgatory before I die.

An issue become desperate lately is the fact that over 90% of the stories are in the same story world.  In fact they follow a number of generations of the same family from just after the Civil War thru the present.  That's seven or eight generations.  I think.  I've lost count.  And that is part of the problem.  Since this storyworld was my passion I always wanted to remain in it but for the sake of the NaNo rules I started a new POV character story arc each time.

Well I started developing another character for the November NaNo and I am really loving her.  But I don't know where she fits in the family.  I need to find her place on the family tree and on the timeline and all of that info is trapped in a minimum of two dozen files except for what I think I remember.  But I can't trust my memory as well as I used to.  So it is time I had a reference book or file or both in which all of the Who What Where When Why and How is in one place.  Something like what TV series use and call the series bible.

That is what the second notebook--the spiral one--in the pic above is for.  Well there is already a computer file version created and dabbled in during previous ROW80 when this was one of the several goals alongside the current story wordcount goal but I also need a physical grab and go for handy reference.  This is how I describe the plan in the project summary at NaNoWriMo:

This  (storyworld bible) would include: existing and planned story titles, lists of POV characters, lists of supporting characters, family trees, time lines for each character, each story and the historical events current for each story, character sketches and monologs, settings from landscapes to floorplans, lists of research that needs tending to for each story, lists of scenes written and yet to be written, and whatever other info I encounter that seems to need to be available no matter which story or which POV I'm writing at the moment.

 

In order to accomplish this I'm going to be reading through all of the individual story files created for each new challenge to cull the info and note where I find contradictions and plot holes, factual errors and unconvincing character behavior.

 

As I collect the info and organize it I will be considering where two or more stories need to be compressed into one since sometimes starting a WriMo Project with a new POV character made it a 'new' novel only for the sake of the challenge.

 

One of the first things I will do is collect all the titles of begun and planned stories and post it in the excerpt form below.  There are many more than are reflected in the titles of my NaNo projects since some are yet undeveloped and some were developed for other writing challenges or before I encountered NaNo in 2004.

Workstation Right 1/3 Plus Couch

The couch which can extend desk area is also my bed tho you might be forgiven for wondering if it belonged to a child.  No those are my own stuffed critters all collected since I moved in and it is nearly equal in volume to myself.  This is something I never did as a child.  I always preferred the baby dolls and they weren't cuddly.

Having two laptops active will be temporary.  I'm in the process of breaking in the Dell Windows 11 on the left and currently it is dedicated to writing only.  But it's already been several months and I need to get serious about setting it up to handle everything as the 7 year old HP Windows 10 has been glitchy for over a year.  This is the first time I've had to handle breaking in a new computer without live-in tech support.  Add my vision issues and the challenge is overwhelming.

So this is where I make my goals explicit for ROW80 Round 3:

• Morning pages daily.  Average 40 minutes (ala Julia Cameron The Artist Way and Writing For Life)
• Storydreaming with notebook for noting ideas for characters or scenes. (ala Robert Owen Butler From Where You Dream)  30 minutes per day
• Working on the Fruits of the Spirit (aka FOS) Storyworld Bible at least 30 minutes per day at least 5 days per week.  I'm sure this will expand as I get involved but I need to set a minimum for that jumpstart.
• Weekly Artist Date (ala Julia Cameron)  This is about doing something to recharge your creative battery.  I'll go into more detail in one of the check-ins.
• A minimum of 5 minutes of physical activity.  Either a walk outside with my caregiver or a session on my mini-tramp, or pacing the floor between front and back door.  I hope to increase the time to 10 minutes by the end of July.  I know I can't tolerate more than 5 on the tramp when restarting it tho.  The walks outside do already average 10 to 15 minutes but I can't count on there always being time for them on all or any of the four days I have the caregiver.  They have to be squeezed in between the necessary chores and errands.
• I want to reengage with my blog so: Two blog posts per week besides the two check-ins. One about encountering other people's stories via print, video or audio which can include formal reviews.  The other about a current fiber art WIP or about one of my personal challenges: widowhood, independent living with visual impairment and autism and issues related to health and aging among them.

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