Day 183 - Half Time

Image of half time by frederick.s, via Flickr.com

I finally made it to the half way point in my project, although it took a month longer than I had expected. But it's my project. The rules are my rules. I can change them when I need to. And I needed to rest for a few weeks.

I will complete my project for today by taking stock of what I have learned thus far.

• First, practice may not make perfect, but it sure makes it easier to get started or think of a new topic to write about after a stretch of writing regularly. When I started this project. I sometimes spent excessive time looking at the screen, thinking about what to write. And then I'd spend about as many hours as there were left before midnight to finish my piece for the day. Often it was obvious - at least to me - that I stopped because I ran out of time, not because I felt I had finished the piece. After six months, I have set myself a goal of spending no more than two hours each day on the project and have been able to stick to that new rule.

• Second, I continue to find that my own experiences, even those from childhood, are the easiest for me to write about. Because practice is good for developing skill, I think the pieces are getting better. I hope that by the end of the year I will be able to write the pieces from the third-person point of view instead of first-person. This lesson remains one of the most remarkable for me because I always thought I needed to get away from Minnesota in order to have experiences worth writing about. Instead, I find my life in Minnesota as a child still offers me plenty of material. Maybe it is the influence of Garrison Keillor who has taught many people to look around and observe what is in front of them.

• Third, writing about myself, writing words that I had kept to myself, from others, has been more liberating than I had expected. It is like practice makes perfect - it gets easier to let go of the some of the camouflage that protected my ego each time. And my ego has survived. I still may need to write some of my stories as if they are fiction to give me plausible deniability.  Some I have met here have asked how I dare to post what I write on a blog. I replied that the stories are mine, not someone else's. How can someone steal my stories? If what I write serves to inspire someone else to write, that's a good outcome. Besides, I still have a guardian angel, maybe even more than one.

• Fourth, I will continue even after I reach Day 365. I will continue because the habit is a good one and by then the habit will be well established. Writing every day has also made it much easier for me to put together a Toastmasters speech. I plan to join the San Diego Writers and Editors Guild in order to share my writing experiences with others, to get feedback from others, to develop skills from others more experienced than I.

These lessons aren't so different from those I reported after my first week. I don't consider that to mean that I haven't learned anything since then. I need to use the same or similar words to describe the lessons, but the depth of the learning has increased over time.

Day 120 - If You Want Something Done, Ask A Busy Person

Image by natalia love, via Flickr

It is the end of April; I have made it one-third of the way through this project, an opportunity for more stock taking and reflection.

At the end of the first month, I concluded that writing first person memories was easier than trying to write fictional pieces. That is still true. I also concluded that I needed to read something each day in order to spark my thoughts. And that is still true, but I find that completing a project each day seems to take up just the amount of time I have, rather than less time each day, leaving little time for reading. And my last conclusion at the end of the first month was that it was getting easier to write each day. That is harder for me to affirm. Perhaps I have hit a plateau. It isn't harder for me to write, but it doesn't yet feel easier.

Whether at work or in my personal life, I seem always to be trying to get one more thing done than I have time to do, trying to prove Ben Franklin got it right when he uttered the words in the title. Some days I think taking on this project is the one more thing. But I'm going to try to keep going. I may just have to try scaling back on the length of what I write each day.

Starting today.

Day 32 - Stock Taking

Image by Joe Lanman, via Flickr

I made it through the first month, one-twelfth of my planned 365 days, without missing a day. There may have been a couple of days when I was a bit short of my goal of 500 words, but I wrote more some days, so my average is still above the target. Even more important, I have found myself able to delete unnecessary words at least some of the time.

On Day 7 I did a little stock taking through sharing what I had learned already. As a reminder, here are the three lessons I reported then:

• I was surprised how often I chose experiences from my childhood as inspiration and content.
• I realized I need to stop fearing being vulnerable when writing about my experiences.
• I need to let go of the goal of writing finished, final pieces each day.

Since Day 7, I have chosen more memories from my early life as the subjects, including one that I hesitated pressing the "Publish" button because of what I was admitting about myself. If you have been reading along as I write, can you guess which one that was?

Since Day 7, I have tried to write fictional pieces, loosely based on my own memories and experiences, but I find that is still very challenging which resulted in some of my day's work barely being completed before the stroke of midnight. So I have turned back to what is easier - first person accounts of things that really happened to me or those around me. When I write from a first person viewpoint, I have little trouble getting started and even less difficulty finishing something long before the clock-imposed deadline arrives.

Another lesson from my first month is the realization that I need to read something every day as well. Some days watching a movie or favorite TV show can provide me with enough stimulation to begin thinking about what to write about, but reading is better as I compare the great writers' ability to conjure up an image in my mind with their words to my looking at pictures to try to conjure up the words to describe them. So far I have always written something first and then looked for photos that come close to what I saw in my mind to illustrate. But I have tucked away a few photos that I hope to use to spark my thinking before I write this month.

The last lesson is that it really is getting easier each day. This one shouldn't be a surprise since it was in large part the reason I decided to set out on this path. It isn't the first time that I have realized tasks get easier with practice.

Image by jjpacres, via Flickr

For example, when I think back to my first year in Toastmasters as I set the goal of delivering (and that, of course, first meant writing) ten speeches in a year, I recall how challenging it was. It was challenging to figure out what I could talk about for 5 to 7 minutes. Then it was challenging to  determine just how that topic could be used to fit the purpose of the project. I gave myself three weeks to write and practice each of those 10 speeches. I met my goal that year and achieved the Competent Toastmaster award, the most basic of the Toastmasters educational levels. I went on to complete ten more speeches the following year and received the Advanced Communicator Bronze award. And the year after that I decided to complete a second Competent Communicator manual because I realized that the first time I had just given ten speeches, not completed the goals of developing specific skills outlined in the ten projects. By the time I had completed my second Competent Communicator award, I knew I could give a speech on the same topic, even something someone might consider trivial - I chose jigsaw puzzles - ten different ways, one for each of the projects, each time building on the skills I had worked on before.

Now, with one months' worth of my 365 Project complete, I feel I could write a speech a day. But I am thankful that I don't have to.

Day 26 - Katherine Anne Porter

We are going to a play tonight, so I need to settle for something that meets my 500 word minimum instead of a finished product. So I have decided to write my observations about Katherine Anne Porter's work. I have been reading a book of her collected stories and it feels as though I am reading what I have always wanted to write. I don't think I had ever read any of her writing before. Nothing seems familiar, or at least nothing seems like anything I have read before, except that everything seems familiar in an eerie sort of way.

The first stories were set in Mexico, written in 1922 in New York. All the qualities that I thought I wanted in my writing - a foreign location but written while living in New York.

But later in the collected stories was one about an American poet living in Mexico who fell in love with a woman who joined him in Mexico. And she was from Minnesota. I had a hard time feeling any sympathy for the poet. I was apparently identifying with the Minnesota gal.

Every story, even though they were written around the time my mother was a toddler, every story felt like the words were the ones I had been waiting to write.

And then I got to the short novel Old Mortality. There shouldn't be anything in it that seems familiar. It begins in 1885. It is set in Kentucky on a horse ranch. The main characters so far are two sisters, 8 and 12, whose mother died when they were much younger. But there is something about it that feels like it is my story. Maybe it is because much of the action so far centers around the contents of a trunk that the girls' grandmother goes through twice a year and the girls get to sit nearby and watch, if they are quiet enough. It reminds me a bit of the wooden chest that was in the basement of my parents' first house, the one that had all sorts of mysterious items in it that we were not allowed to open the trunk to look at, but we could watch when Mom or Dad opened it.

In it were the silk kimono and the silk fan from Japan, the silk "grass" skirt from Hawaii, and the real grass skirt from the Phillipines that Dad brought back from his years with the Merchant Marines. And the cewpie doll that Dad won for Mom at some fair. Also there were comic books. Comic books that we couldn't take out to read on our own; we had to wait for Dad to give them to us.

While I am not certain just where Katherine Anne Porter grew up, I choose at this point to believe it was in Kentucky, or at least in the south. If that is true, then Old Mortality has something in common with what I have learned about my own writing from this project: that the subject of one's childhood is a rich source for material, even it if lacks the exotic qualities of a foreign location and the experience of living and writing in New York.

Day 21 - Writer's Block, Day 2

Image by Incessant Flux via Flickr

Last night we watched Cinderella. And for the first time, I spent time observing the bit players instead of the usual ones. I paid attention to the king, his duke, even the prince, instead of Cinderella, her step-mother and step-sisters, even her fairy godmother.

I didn't recall, for example, that the king was so unhappy with his son's frittering away his time instead of looking for an appropriate wife. I didn't recall that the king gave his duke only one day to arrange the ball. And I didn't recall that Cinderella wasn't aware that the handsome man she danced with all night was the prince.

Watching the king reminded me of some ambassadors whose expectations of what can be done run right up against the boundary of the impossible. The duke reminded me of management officers who are usually the ones expected to pull off the near impossible.

The night before we watched Arthur, not the 1980's version with Dudley Moore, the later version with Russell Brand. Arthur's mother's disappointment in her son's activities and choices resonated in the king of Cinderella's statements about the prince's frittering away his time.

So it got me thinking about a play I saw in New York in 1968 by Tom Stoppard, Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a play written from the perspective of two minor characters in Hamlet. And I also started wondering just how the prince frittered away his time. In the Disney version, it is hard to imagine what he did - or didn't do - between becoming an adult and the ball. Those are ideas I'll explore later.

Day 20 - Writer's Block

Image by Tony Dowler via Flickr

I am having a lot of trouble getting started today. I turned to the Writers Exercise Generator for ideas and tried several of them, looking for inspiration. But none of them worked. So I'm going to have to try just writing for the sake of writing, without great hopes for the results.

There was a lot of banging around our house today as Henry and his plumbing crew began their work to replace the sewer pipes below our house. Not surprising, given the age of our house, the task is not entirely straightforward or a simple as it looked yesterday. The fact that our house was built in stages explains why the plumbing is really three segments joined together in an expedient, but not necessarily the most efficient manner.

The pipes under the main house have all been replaced. So we have water and drains for the kitchen, laundry and two of the bathrooms. But sewers leading from the master bath to the main house go under the garage and all our efforts to find a hatch failed. And in the course of replacing the pipes that could be replaced, Henry found there are roots in the pipes outside the house. So that means those pipes need to be replaced as well, and that will require trenching through out yard.

Henry did solve one mystery that has nothing to do with plumbing. He noticed clumps of dirt in our yard and explained that we have a gopher - or two. Our yard is very lumpy, not nice an level like I am used to.  He also pointed out one area of our lawn that appears to be in so much better shape than the rest. The shape of the particularly green patch suggested to Henry that there may be a a break in the underground irrigation system pipes. That system was put in place by the investors who bought the house and then renovated it, so it is not at all old. Unless we see our water bills growing unreasonably, we'll probably just accept that some of the lawn looks in better shape than the rest. The direction that the trench for the sewer line will have to go won't give us any clues to the status of the irrigation system.

We did find one mystery that I'll have to explore further another time. Henry noticed the floor in the closet in the laundry room was wooden and there was a hinged hatch with two holes in it that looked just right for opening it. After we moved all the items out of the closet and Henry lifted the hatch, all we found was an underground cavity, a little like a safe built into a wall, without the security of a metal door and lock. But more curious was that the portion of the floor next to the hatch had holes in it, holes that appeared to be air holes for whatever living thing might be put into the cavity. Each one of us when we saw the holes had the same reaction - what are they for?

Day 18 - The Project

On Day 1, I completed the first exercise in the 12-Day Plan for Simple Writing Exercises. For today, I'd like to expand on each of the 10 potential book titles from that exercise by including a paragraph summary of the book.

Day 1:  Write 10 potential book titles of books you’d like to write.

1.     Another Day in Paradise
      During her three years on the island of Barbados, Olivia Engel discovered a world where time passes at a different pace, words often mean the opposite of what she thought, and those who looked like the good guys weren't.
2.     Someone to Watch Over Me
      From early childhood Ana Marquez-Greene had always felt a presence, a spirit that kept her from harm. But after her mother's death, the presence was absent.

3.     Death Of an American
      For the past eight years, Foreign Service Officer Dylan Hockley had served as staff assistant to the ambassador of a major western European ally, served as political reporting officer of a South American country, and desk officer for two small African countries. He thought he could handle anything. but he wasn't prepared as consular officer in a small eastern European country to receive a call about the death of an American when he learned the American was his friend, Benjamin Wheeler.  

4.     Mirror, Mirror
      Catherine Hubbard bounced from foster home to foster home until she turned 18 and found herself homeless and living on the streets. Determined to get a college education, but convinced that her circumstances would prevent her from being accepted, Catherine created an alternate persona 

5.     Always a Bridesmaid
      Grace McDonnell knew she was exceptional. Intelligent, musically talented, a graceful dancer, but unlucky. At least that's how she felt. In spite of her talents, she seemed doomed to come in second. Always a bridesmaid, never a bride.

6.     Please Pass the Potatoes
      The youngest of eight children, Jesse Lewis felt himself in competition for attention. At school, teachers compared him to his older siblings, expecting the same high grades. At home, his parents did their best to provide all their children with the attention they wanted and needed. But Jesse felt short-changed and misunderstood.

7.     Dancing in Yemen
      Emilie Parker, Peace Corps volunteer, found herself in a village just to the north of the capital Sana'a where the tribal chief decided to kidnap a diplomat from a western embassy in an attempt to force the government of Yemen to build a school for the  girls of the village.

8.     Behind the Closed Door
      A successful lawyer, Noah Pozner's life changed on the day a client walked into his office requesting her will be drawn up. What he learned about his client tempted him to consider opening doors to learning more about his past, doors that might be best left closed.

9.     The Price of Sweaters in Tehran
      In 1976, the Shah of Iran felt sufficiently in control of the local Islamic establishment to permit public observation of the Shi'a religious holiday Day of Ashura. Public observation had been banned since the 1950s when several foreigners were killed in the demonstrations in the bazaar. This year, Jack Pinto found himself caught up in an exuberant, threatening crowd, 

10. But What About Doha?
      Jessica Rekos joined the teaching staff of the Georgetown University in Doha and found herself in the middle of intrigue and mystery surrounding a former instructor whose students either loved or hated him.

Day 10 1/2 - Titles and Creative Commons Licenses

After 10 days of posting pieces, I realize that it is redundant to include a title at the top when I have a title at the top of each post. So beginning with Day 11, I will drop the titles within the posts.

I also realized that I haven't explained that another of my goals is to find images that I can post on the site without violating any copyrights. Flickr is a great source of images that are covered by Creative Commons licenses. There are six options for licensing under the Creative Commons concept; all permit the use of an unaltered image, provided it is attributed to the source.  The captions under images, if they are not my own, include the Flickr name for the source of each, the attribution. I have added a Creative Commons license to this blog as well. You should be able to see it in the right column of the blog now.

I wasn't so careful in selecting images for some of my warming up pieces. Google search for images brings up such a wonderful range of images that I let myself get carried away. I didn't intentionally violate any copyrights or royalties, but I didn't spend much time doing research either. I plan to go back to correct that in the next few days.

Day 7 - The Project

Image from Michael Holden on Flickr

This evening I attended a Toastmasters meeting where the theme for the meeting was New Beginnings. It seemed appropriate. We are in a new year. The club is meeting in a new location. And on Saturday I got myself a new hairstyle.

The Table Topics question assigned to me was to tell about one of my goals for the new year, an opportunity to describe my 365 Project.  I find that telling someone else about a goal is one of the best ways to ensure that I follow through. Another member responded to her Table Topics question by describing a writers' group she joined that will be meeting through the next month. And a third member described a writing course she is teaching later this month.

Those coincidences made me decide to expand further on my goals for this project. The primary goal is for me to establish the habit of writing every day, but I also hope that others will consider writing more, too. So in addition to writing pieces that may lead up to writing whole stories, I will be sharing the lessons I learn along the way. After less than a week of my Project 365, I already have some to share.

Image from courosa on Flickr

The first lesson is that I am surprised that the experiences I have chosen are related more to my childhood growing up in Minnesota than from the many foreign places I couldn’t wait to travel to when I was still in Minnesota growing up. The experiences easiest to draw from are those I thought were too common, too ordinary, too boring while I was living them. And that made me realize that I should have started writing much, much earlier.

The second lesson is that I have to be willing to be vulnerable when writing about the experiences I know best – my own. It is possible that someone – family member, friend, acquaintance – may recognize something of me or of themselves in what I write. So long as I am unwilling to put onto paper – even this electronic version of paper – something that others may recognize, I will never be able to write believably. It has been harder for me to write fictional pieces than stories I have clearly identified as my own experiences, such as many of the warming up exercises I prepared.

Image from urbanworkbench on Flickr

The third lesson is that I need to let go of thinking that everything I write for this project needs to be a finished, final piece. I know – intellectually at least – that writing includes lots of rewriting and editing and then rewriting again. So if I am unable to write a complete story or even a complete character description each day, I still need to write something – in order to develop the habit.

I have added a widget that includes links to several of the online writing exercises. I added them for myself, but also in the hope that others may be inspired to undertake their own writing project.  I chose 500 words as my target length and every day as the frequency. If you choose some other target length or frequency for your own writing project, and if you are willing to be vulnerable enough to share your goals with me, I’d love to know.

Day 1 - The Project

Image from http://www.amandablain.com/anyone-have-a-
circle-of-online-writerbloggersnews-reporters/

       The purpose for my Project 365 is for me to develop the habit of writing more intentionally.  Toward that goal, I plan to write at least 500 words every day for one year.  In some cases it will be a struggle for me to reach 500 words. In other cases, the goal of 500 words will require that I edit out some of what I write.  There is nothing magic about 500 words; it is just a goal.

       For most of December, I have been warming up for this. Most of the warming up pieces are speeches or other essays I wrote in the past, so the exercise was largely editing the pieces for the new purpose. In many cases, I found whole sections of them that weren’t necessary to the story, so I got experience with what I find the hardest – deleting words that I had written.

       Most of the warming up pieces are complete – complete stories, complete essays, complete thoughts. With Project 365, the pieces won’t read like complete pieces. I hope this doesn’t reduce the readers’ enjoyment. I hope that by providing readers with complete pieces during the warming up phase, I have enticed at least some of you to stick with me, to read what I write and to provide me with feedback.

       Most of the warming up pieces have been more than 500 words. Apparently a five-to-seven minute speech, the target length for most Toastmasters speeches, require around 700 words, at least at the speed I talk.

       What I write will likely fall into the following categories:

      §  Character descriptions,

      §  Scene descriptions,

      §  Conversations,

      §  Essays,

      §  Memories,

      §  Journal entries, or

      §  Exercises from any of many online writing exercise sites.

Image from http://io9.com/5928595/researchers-identify-the-
kinds-of-exercise-that-help-you-live-longer

       I may even work on the same piece more than once, to improve it, to try out a new idea in response to suggestions from others, or to complete one of the online exercise ideas. For example, one writing exercise involves rewriting a piece from a different person’s viewpoint.  I will explore how my stories would sound if told by one of the other people in them.

       Here is an example of a writing exercise from http://www.writersdigest.com/online-editor/a-12-day-plan-of-simple-writing-exercise: 

       Day 1:  Write 10 potential book titles of books you’d like to write.

1.     Another Day in Paradise

2.     Someone to Watch Over Me

3.     Death Of an American

4.     Mirror, Mirror

5.     Always a Bridesmaid

6.     Please Pass the Potatoes

7.     Dancing in Yemen

8.     Behind the Closed Door

9.     The Price of Sweaters in Tehran

10. But What About Doha?

       I also plan to use the names and photos of children and staff from the Sandy Hook Elementary School in the pieces I write – a memorial to ensure I remember them. I won’t pretend to write their stories, just to use their names for characters in my stories.

       Because of my experience with Toastmasters, where evaluations from fellow members is a major positive aspect of the learn-by-doing program, I encourage readers to suggest improvements.  If what I write raises questions, ask them. If what I write doesn’t make sense, tell me. Use the Comments block below to share your thoughts. I will use your comments to improve my writing.