Gang Aft Aglay and other Voices I Hear in My Head

Old kitchens have many layers. 

The best laid schemes o’ Mice an’ Men

gang aft aglay. 

                            “To a Mouse” by Robert Burns

A good translation of the title of today’s post would be, go often astray. Maybe you’ve heard the quote before, as I have, as the “best laid plans.”  Either way, it’s in my head today, with a strong Scottish burr, because that darn kitchen put a bit of a wrench in my plans. 

And now, it’s 5 p.m., and I have not written a word today. 

Last night, we filled the truck with construction debris. I have more cabinets to dismantle, so we needed to go to the landfill when it opened this morning at 7:30 a.m. Then we had to load yard waste; then I needed a shower and breakfast.  Holy, moly, one thing after another, but the good news is that most of the demolition is done.  The bad news is I think I’m going to have to take the ceiling down and put a new one in.  

But, I don’t have to do that in the mornings.  I can do that in the afternoons, taking a writing break when my back gets too sore.  

And, to my credit, I’m sitting down to write now, so there’s that.  There was a time in my life where if I’d missed some goal at a set time I would get so down on myself that I would throw my hands in the air and not do anything:  all or nothing syndrome.  

Now, even if I miss goals, I look for ways that I can make progress on whatever I’m working towards.  There’s another useful slogan for this: progress not perfection.  

I’ll close with some Southern wisdom: Tomorrow is another day (Scarlett O’Hara). 

Old kitchens have so many layers. 

I hope you meet your goals today even if you don’t meet them in exactly the way you wanted to. 

Getting Ready for NaNoWriMo One: Overcoming Duality

Black or white/plot or pants. 

Image © Lori Gravley, Maputo, Mozambique, 2013

Anyone who knows me will tell you that I’m a recovering black/white-aholic.  I tend to see the world in dualities, even though I know that it’s more complex.  This shows up to remind me of the work I need to do when I have to make a decision for November:  plot or pants.

I’ve spent a lot of the year reading up on ways to approach novel design: StoryFix, Wired for Story, Save the Cat, and James Scott Bell’s books have all been my wise guides this year.  I think that I need to master a more rigorous approach to planning my novel.  But I hesitate.

I’ve always done some planning. I have copious character notes, timelines, school calendars, maps, etc. for the series of novels that Knowing and Seeing are from.

I have piles of research notes for my Christine novels. 

But I’d like to spend more time making my words beautiful and less time making sense of the books I’ve written during the revision process, so this year, I’d like to try the scene building approach that so many writers use.  You can find the ten-scene outline here.

Terry Pratchett began his books by writing his most important scenes first and filling in later.

This sounds right to me. I’d like to have that overall arc before I write.  Then I think, well, if I’m doing that, shouldn’t I do all forty scenes that Save the Cat suggests? 

On good days, I stop myself there.  As with most of life, writing doesn’t have to be all or nothing.  I can write out the ten scenes, do the character development I normally do, do the research this novel will require and then pants the rest of the scenes in the novel, filling in the gaps.  If that worked for Sir Pratchett, perhaps it will work for me. 

I'll be public with my commitment.  This year, I’ll move beyond duality, and write the ten scene (maybe twenty ;-) outline of my novel before November begins. I don't have to have a detailed outline of every scene.  I can plot some and pants some.  I can be grey.

On Nov. 1, I’ll be ready to jump into those pre-planned scenes, and I'll let myself pants the rest.

Getting Back on Track after Failure

After a wonderful January, in February, I and many other writers on the Ten Minute Novelists and 365 K Facebook list struggled through February.  My guess is that many other people who made New Year’s Resolutions also struggled in February. 

I know I’ve mentioned it before, but I tend to be a little all or nothing in my thinking.  Either I do everything I said I would do or I think I’ve totally failed.  If you look at my earlier posts on challenges and thought I was crazy to commit myself to so much this year, then you’ll probably be shaking your head right now and thinking that that approach might mean that I’ve set myself up for failure. 

But, I’m a recovering perfectionist, so though I struggled with some goals in February, I achieved others.  I didn’t write a poem a day, but I wrote fifteen poems.  I didn’t get my 674 words a day, but I wrote over 5,000 words.  I read many picture books, and I signed up for the ReFoReMo challenge.  I wrote my second picture book draft of the year.  I posted at least weekly in this blog. 

Then March began, and I committed myself to one, just one, of my faltering goals.  In March, I told myself, I would write a poem a day.  Though sometimes I’ve had to write two poems in one day to meet that average, I’m back on track with my poetry in March.   And I’ve already written my picture book draft this month.  And I’m at a total of over 350 picture books read. 

I’d still like to get my daily word count back up, but every time I fail and pick myself back up, I’m learning what it takes for me to be successful.  And I’m retraining my brain.  I don’t have to do everything just right, I just have to keep working even when things get difficult.  As I write this I hear Ellen DeGeneres’s voice in my head, “Just keep swimming.”  And I do, I keep doing the work, I keep moving forward towards my goals. 

I still have work to do this month—I want to catch up on my poetry submissions and I have four picture books ready for queries, so I’d like to get those sent.  But, when I look at the year I’ve had so far, I realize again how responsive I am to assignments (I loved being a student) and how far I’ve come in my recovery as a perfectionist. 

So, if you had some goals that have dropped away in the weirdness of February and the busyness of the new year, don’t be afraid to dust them off and pick them back up.  There are still nine more months in 2016 and so much left to do. 

Wishing you ease, joy, and success!! Lori

On Failure

Travel is inspiring, but travel for work can be exhausting and
can lead to failure. 

A couple of weeks ago, I talked about how much I loved challenges.  But I wouldn’t have loved them as much eight years ago when I was struggling with perfectionism.

Let me tell you where this is coming from.  I had a great January. Did the work, sent the work out, revised the work.  Showed up!  Hooray.  February has been more of a challenge (but not the good kind).

I love the job that pays my bills.  But, it means I travel long distances (which can be exhausting and disorienting no matter how much I enjoy it).  It means that I am with strangers 6-10 hours a day, which is about 100 percent more time than I usually spend with strangers.  I’m an introvert who needs silence.  When I’m working at my paying job (one or two weeks out of every two months, generally), the hours I write and the hours I gather in are cut back from a strong rope to a slender thread. 

So, in February, though it’s halfway through the month, I’ve only written eight poems.  Since I left for Kenya on Feb. 4, I’ve written fewer than 4,000 words.  Picture books are too bulky to carry, so I haven’t read any.  I have two on my laptop that I downloaded from the library, but I haven’t read them yet.  I have poems that need to be sent out.  I did post date some blog posts before I left, so at least that’s done.  But overall, I’ve failed to meet my goals.

Failed.  For a perfectionist, that's a powerful word.  In the past, failing to write poems from Feb. 5-9 as I did would mean that I wouldn’t write any more poems in February.  Maybe not even for the entire year. 

Here's the photo, taken in Kenya during rush 

hour that inspired my poem "Transfiguration."

This is a type of stork that my taxi driver said 

was only found in downtown Nairobi.  You 

thought geese were bad. 

Not keeping up with my word commitment would mean that I’d probably stop writing for a month or two.  But I’ve learned a lot about myself in the past eight years.  Now I know that just because I don’t always meet my goals , it doesn’t mean I won’t meet my goals.  It just means that I’m having a momentary set back.  I can get back to work on the goal when space (mental or physical) opens up. I can write a poem when I have the energy and quiet to find inspiration.  If I don’t have energy, I can forgive myself, take a walk on the treadmill, or sit by the pool and soak in the world.

Today after a twelve-hour flight across Africa and Europe,  I was sitting in the airport waiting to board my flight back across the Atlantic. I looked at a picture I’d taken on the drive to the airport and wrote a poem.  Though the travel can sometimes get in the way of my work, it also feeds my work. 

I finished a long chapbook last year inspired by my travels (Liminality) that is well on its way to becoming a full-length manuscript.  The book is about the places I’ve seen and by the otherness  and peculiar dislocation of travel. 

Now, on the plane, I’m writing this blog post.  I have free economy plus upgrades, so I have plenty of space for my laptop.  (All the travel I do has other benefits, too.)

I don’t have to meet every challenge I set for myself perfectly.  But challenges keep me moving forward.  Since I’ve learned to forgive myself, to be gentle and patient with myself when I encounter difficulties in my writing practice, I find that it’s easier to come back to the work. 

Note:  One book that really helped me think differently about my perfectionism was The Gifts of Imperfection by Brene Brown.  It's helped me accept my wonderful imperfections (most of the time).