Category: seasons

Family, Life Talk, philosophy, seasons, writing

Slow But Steady

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Writing productivity has slowed to a trickle these days. We started school back up on Monday (the girls and I – Carl’s semester doesn’t begin until the end of the month), and between that and rearranging the bedrooms and organizing the arts and crafts supplies and being neighborly and recovering from holidays and travel, and just being so tired (I actually dozed off yesterday afternoon for a little while, which never ever happens), it’s awfully hard to get anything done.

The nice thing about where I’m at right now is that I don’t feel guilty about it. Sure, I’d like to be writing every single day. I’d also like to be awake enough to take care of my clothes each night instead of letting them accumulate beside my bed, but so far that isn’t happening either.

I’ve learned – am still learning – to go with the rhythms of life. Some times I am going to be able to focus on one thing, sometimes on another. Right now, my main focus is on school and keeping the apartment basically livable. Since I have company coming over for tea next week, I imagine pretty soon I’ll have to spend some time focusing on cleaning. Eventually, school will find its own groove again, and I won’t be as tired from all our travels, and I’ll be able to think about writing again.

My stories aren’t going to perish if I don’t tend them every day. My writing abilities aren’t going to vanish if I take a week or so where I only write a few words here and there. I know this is contrary to what most professional writers say – that you must write every day, even if it’s only for fifteen minutes. I’m sure there will come a time in my life where that kind of self-discipline is absolutely applicable. Right now, it’s more important to me as a person, not necessarily as a writer, to show myself grace.

It’s also more important for me to be a good teacher to my kids, since I have taken up that responsibility. It’s more important for me to be a present and engaged mom and wife. It’s important to be a good neighbor and friend. Writing is important, and it is vital to who I am, and I would not dream of just “not writing” for an entire season, but it doesn’t need to be first and foremost on my list of priorities right now. There will come a day when my children are grown and my life is more settled, and I will be able to bump the writing up on my list.

For now, I’m okay with simply making sure I don’t go too long without doing writing of some sort.

Books, critiquing, editing, goals, Life Talk, philosophy, publishing, reading list, seasons, writing

New Year, New-ish Goals

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Friends, it is 2015, and I don’t know about you, but I couldn’t be more pleased.

Not that 2014 was a bad year. Not at all. We did a lot of learning and growing and stretching in it, and also took plenty of trips to the beach. Can’t really complain.

But a new year is here, and I am ready to put into action the results of all that learning and growing and stretching. And some more beach trips.

I signed Joy up for violin lessons with someone here on campus who teaches (EXCITEMENT ABOUNDS) and realized that this means she will be taking ballet lessons, art lessons, piano lessons, and violin lessons this semester; Gracie will be taking art and ballet (possibly starting piano in the fall, we’ll see); and of course we’ll be continuing with our Friday homeschool group. Guess there’s no question but that I’m a mom of kids instead of littles now, with all these activities. How am I supposed to be a proper hermit with all this running them around hither and yon?

I have a few goals for 2015. Learn and practice more self-discipline is the big one. I’m way too prone to flutter frantically around, getting overwhelmed by life and all that I need/want to do, and not get any of it done. This is an old tale, I’m sung it before here and elsewhere, and I am well aware that the kind of self-discipline I am after will likely take me the rest of my life to master. That’s okay. I’ll just keep plugging away at it.

Another familiar goal: read less, savor more, get deeper into what I read instead of charging through books so quickly that I can’t even remember them two months later without checking Goodreads. I’m working on this one already. I started Trollope’s Can You Forgive Her (I tried reading it once a few years back and never made it all the way through) and am stopping to jot down notes whenever something strikes me, re-reading certain passages if I feel the need or desire, trying to consciously slow myself down to enjoy the book instead of plowing through it like a bull in a china shop.

I’ve specifically set the goal of reading 12 non-fiction books this year. I find non-fiction incredibly rewarding, and yet incredibly hard to get through, so I figure if I plan to read one per month, by December, I might find it’s a bit easier to do.

For writing: I’m learning to slow down there, too (noticing a pattern, anyone? I told you 2014 was a year of growing). Not push, push, push to GET PUBLISHED GET OUT THERE OR ELSE YOU ARE DOOMED, DOOMED I TELL YOU. Enjoy writing. Dig deeper into it. Be more honest. Polish it up again, even after I think it’s perfect (because six months later, I’ll realize that it’s not). Explore new genres, new ways of sharing stories, new ways even of writing. Don’t be afraid of going off the path.

But at the same time, while holding this loosely, I have set myself a few goals, because how can you go off the path if you haven’t established what the path is? So, I would like to finish the first draft of of the serial story, with the goal of polishing and publishing through a newsletter one chapter a month. I would like to get From the Shadows polished and ready to publish. And I would like to start over again with Magic in Disguise – I am almost finished outlining the new version, so that’s exciting.

I’ve got a few more personal goals/hopes for this year – but I’m holding those close to me for right now. They’re fragile; I don’t want to expose them too much or they might disintegrate.

And speaking of self-discipline … I just remembered that I need to pack today for our almost-week-long jaunt to visit family which starts tomorrow, so I guess I’d better sign off from here and get to that.

After I finish my tea, naturally. Priorities.

DSC_0071

children, goals, school, seasons, writing

Already Booked (My Life, That Is)

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Worked some on From the Shadows today and thought, “Boy, if I could just take one week where I did nothing but write (like I did when I wrote the initial novella), I could have this sucker done.”

Then I looked at our school schedule calendar and saw that we don’t take a week off until mid-October. And that week is already booked for finishing sewing the kids’ Halloween costumes and, if there is any time left after that, making them some fall dresses.

Sigh. I guess pecking away at it here and there, during the evenings and in between math and grammar lessons, will have to suffice.

Family, Life Talk, seasons, writing

Restored and Ready

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We have safely returned from our camping extravaganza! And now my morning coffee isn’t half as good without my uncle brewing it for me in his french press over his little camp stove, and I find myself turning around to make a joke to my cousins only to remember they aren’t here way too often.

On the other hand … sleeping in a real bed is glorious. Having my clothing and hair not stink of campfire smoke is bliss. Reading books on my Kindle via a bedside lamp instead of a flashlight is lovely.

Camping was fun, and returning to civilization was sweet.

I didn’t do any writing, and very little reading, while we were away. I hadn’t planned to, knowing that our time was going to be taken up with camping stuff and family stuff, so it’s not like I was surprised or disappointed. In fact, I think it was good for me, because when I saw the email from Amanda of Fly Casual on our drive back home, with a rough mock up for the cover of the sci-fi novella I wrote, all kinds of creative juices bubbled up fresh in me.

Of course, those all went toward Ooh, we should really take Laura’s advice and turn the novella into a novel, which wasn’t exactly in the plan – I was supposed to come back and be inspired to finish Magic in Disguise and Wings of Song. Oh well.

Be that as it may, I am working on ways to expand the novella (titled From the Shadows), Amanda and I are talking about the cover, and yet with all this, I’m still thinking about MID and WOS. And while thinking isn’t writing, it does make the writing go much better.

So yes, a good vacation all the way around.

I came home to a letter approving our education plan from the school district, and we are going to start school again next week, and while the kids are less than excited, I am pumped over our plans for homeschool this year. Lego and Art club at the library, a new homeschool group meeting weekly, lots more of Mummy reading aloud and the kids being creative, a simplified schedule, field trips to explore nature at many of the local estates and farms … I know that plans go by the wayside as soon as real life starts, but I also know that the better the plans are, the better things go even when chaos hits.

It’s been a wonderful summer, and I am so looking forward to the fall.20140816_104637 20140816_105152 20140816_113302

(Pictures not from camping – I barely turned my camera on while we were there – but from a recent trip to a local estate whose gardens and forest trails are open to the public. This is one of the top spots on my “field trip” list.)

goals, Life Talk, seasons, writing

Novellas, Laundry, and Revelations

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I’m supposed to be cleaning the apartment right now. My parents, sister, and niece are coming out tomorrow evening for the week (not staying here, but still will be plenty of time spent here), and my mother-in-law is getting here on Friday for the weekend. Joy’s first ballet recital is on Saturday, hence the family. Hence the need to clean.

Which is why I’m blogging, naturally.

What I really (really, really) want to be be doing is editing the sci-fi novella I wrote in four days last week. Three points against that:

I wrote 29,000 words in four days and pretty much broke my brain; it needs a break from excessive wording.

I finished writing it yesterday morning right before church; it needs to sit for a while before I go back to edit, there’s no point in diving in now because it’s too fresh.

Because of all the mad writing last week, the apartment is a disaster, and even if I didn’t have family coming in this week I would need to clean. I need to trade in my writer hat for my real person hat this week.

So, I’m trying to be good. But I still don’t feel much like cleaning, and I drank too much coffee this morning so I’m wired, so I’m hoping blogging satisfies the writing desire and also calms me down enough to tackle the mountain of clothes teetering next to my bed, and the school papers that I need to grade (Joy  discovered the concept of grading recently thanks to Daddy’s papers and assignments, and now she begs me to grade all her school work, strange child) and sort, and scrub the tooth powder stains out of the sink.

And then bake some brownies for getting together with a friend this evening.

(I’m starting to convince myself to get started here.)

I have to say, as exhausting and overwhelming and bizarre as it was to write a 29,000 word novella in four days, it was also kind of amazing. The story grabbed me last Sunday, and I tried to ignore it, but it wouldn’t go away, so I tried to jot down the plot outline so I could write it later, but that didn’t work, and finally I started to write it thinking that I could just peck away at it whenever I needed a break from my two current “real” writing projects, and then the next thing I knew I was writing madly every spare moment (and a few not-spare ones – hence the pile-up of chores). Then, Sunday morning, I typed the last few hundred words about ten minutes before we left the house, and now I’m still trying to figure out how on earth that happened.

Exhausting and amazing and kind of encouraging to think that someday, in about thirteen years when Grace is off to college or whatever she chooses to do with her life and Carl’s no longer in school and we can share chores more equally, it might not take me two to four years to write one book.

And that, in turn, makes it easier now to put more focus on the everyday-life things, and ease up on my own internal pressure to do more writing, because the seasons will eventually change and things will be reversed, and I’m not missing out on my chances if I’m a slow writer now.

So all in all, an incredibly satisfying week last week.

And now I think I’m really done procrastinating.

Happy Monday, everyone!

Books, children, fiction, seasons

Childhood Eternal

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I’ve been reading through Elizabeth Enright’s books lately – just finished the Melendy quartet, and am waiting for my paperback editions of Gone-Away Lake and Return to Gone-Away (I stole borrowed my mother’s old, old hardcover editions when I moved away from home, but they are so old that they’re starting to crumble, so I decided to pick up some cheaper paperbacks to read without having to wear white gloves) to get here on Monday so I can go through those, as well. Then there’s Thimble Summer to be read somewhere in there as well.

Then There Were Five

So, with this being my book diet lately, you can imagine my delight yesterday, when the kids and I were out enjoying the sunshine down by the pond, to see three little boys half-hidden in the bracken and murk on the other side. It looked like they were building either a fort or a raft, chattering away as they did so, busy as beavers and happy as could be. I couldn’t have conjured up a scene more perfectly reminiscent of Enright’s worlds if I’d tried.

The Saturdays

I’ve read some reviews that accuse her books of being too sweet, too saccharine, too unrealistic in their portrayal of children and the world. Nonsense, I say! Simple and wholesome, yes, but not impossible. Her children aren’t “little dears” who are sugary sweet and live in a ridiculously perfect world. In fact, they remind me a lot of myself as a kid – imperfect people, living in an imperfect world, but filled with the joy of just being alive, and being a kid.

Gone-Away Lake, illustrated by Beth & Joe Krush

So I was extra glad yesterday, on a day of glorious, perfect spring, a day that made me want to sing along with all the birds and turn cartwheels if I knew how, to see that childhood, to a certain extent, remains the same throughout all generations.

Thimble Summer
humor, Life Talk, seasons

He Stamps His Feet And Claps His Hands And Turns Around to View His Land

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I am decidedly not a gardener, and yet every year right around the time winter is loosening its grip, making reluctant way for spring, I get the urge to plant and dig and tuck tiny seeds away to await them bursting into life.

Granted, most of the time those seeds don’t make it (see opening line), but that never stops me from wanting to try again.

In the past couple of years, we’ve done container gardens.

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We never got much of a harvest from them, but the bits of food that did survive always felt like such triumph. Hurrah! One pea plant! A few tiny tomatoes at the end of the year, when everyone else’s were finished! Two peppers, shrunken and shriveled! And a handful of lettuce leaves the slugs didn’t devour. We are gods!

Living here, we don’t even have that option. There are small garden plots available for each building, but nobody (including our RLCs) seems to know who is in charge of allotting them, or what you have to do to get one. We had thought about joining a CSA, but surprise! You have to do that during the winter. All the spaces are already filled. So we will have to rely on farmers markets for our produce, and I will continue to make all our acquaintances think I’m crazy by cooing at the budding flowers by our front door every time I go in or out.

Took this photo two weeks ago. They all have buds now!
Took this photo two weeks ago. They all have buds now!

Spring fever. It makes us all a little crazy, especially if we’ve no outlet.

children, Family, humor, Life Talk, school, seasons

Oh, THIS Is Why I’m Tired

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Got up at 4:30 this morning to take care of Grace’s latest coughing fit. Two nights ago she was up almost all night hacking, so I was happy enough to hand her over to Carl after 15 minutes today and collapse back onto the couch (where I’ve been sleeping while she’s been restless, easier to tend her needs without disturbing Carl) to get a little more sleep if possible.

Woke again at 9, mildly horrified at having slept so late, but glad I was able to catch up on the missed sleep from Monday night. Walked into the girls’ room to wish them “good morning,” only to be confronted with a scene from a horror movie. Blood on the carpet, covering Joy’s nightie, splattered on her comforter, and a guilty expression on her face.

“I tried not to pick my nose,” she said before I could utter one word, “but it’s just too hard.”

I buttoned my lips and hauled her into the bathroom, where we took care of the bloody nose, and then stripped the bed and her and threw all the blood-spattered items into the tub to soak in cold water. Trimmed her nails, and was scrubbing at the carpet when Carl got back from his meeting with a professor.

Made Grace, who was coughing again, some hot lemon-honey-ginger-cayenne pepper, then got both girls some food, and now, at 10:00, am finally ready to start thinking about breakfast myself. After which I will need to go commandeer the washing machines on our floor for an hour. We’re meeting some new friends at the playground after lunch today, and this evening I’m supposed to go to Bible Study, and we do need to fit school in at some point today …

I guess, really, it isn’t that surprising that I’m so tired all the time.

Family, goals, Life Talk, philosophy, seasons

Far From Ideal

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You guys might or might not be good for me. I spent a ridiculous amount of time this weekend coming up with the perfect combination of first and middle names for the third-daughter-we’re-never-going-to-have. All the talk on here about names … Carl laughed himself silly when I saw me scribbling out the list.

*blushes*

Anyway. On to this post.

I have this ideal family life, in my head. It’s not even so unreasonable. It doesn’t involve children wearing white dresses and running through fields of wildflowers with nary a grass stain to be seen, or me standing at the sink washing my glassware to sparkling cleanliness with a chipper smile on my perfectly-made-up face. It’s actually pretty simple. It is this …

I read stories – many of them – out loud to the children every day. Some are picture books, some are longer chapter books.

We go on walks outside every day. On days when it’s warm enough to hold a pencil without your fingers falling off, we take drawing supplies so the girls can draw any bits of nature that catch their eye.

We don’t necessarily do art projects every day, but when we do them, they inspire great bursts of creativity and the girls revel in them. Mamma does not grit her teeth and wince over the mess.

We do school according to schedule, and it’s never haphazard, or forgotten because Mamma got distracted.

The kids work with me in the kitchen when making food, and it does not drive me to distraction. I can assign them clean-up chores, and not forget to remind them to keep up with it.

Our home is filled with music and laughter and friendship all the time.

And I am not so dog-weary tired all the time that it’s all I can do to plod through my day.

It doesn’t sound that impossibly, does it? OK, maybe the bit about me not losing it over the inevitable mess that comes with any kind of art project. But the rest of it? It’s simple. It doesn’t require any Herculean bursts of strength to accomplish. Lots of other families do it (I know, I know, comparison is the thief of joy and all that … but it’s true). So why is it so hard for me, for us as a family, to live that sort of ordinary, peaceful, simple, happy life? What is it about me that makes me so tired all the time that I can’t seem to get much more than the basics of life done in a day? I get almost-enough sleep these days. I’ve eliminated as many outside stressors as possible from my life, which were what used to suck all my energy from me. I eat mostly-right, and while I don’t specifically exercise, I do my best to stay somewhat active. I’m not depressed, thank God, anymore. The kids are 4 and 6, a pretty awesome age, past the baby-and-toddler stage, not requiring my attention every second of the day, requiring all I’ve got just to keep them and me alive.

When I was eighteen, I started feeling the aimlessness of my life. One day, as I was grumbling to God about the fact that I had all these great ambitions and yet all I was doing was working in the hardware store and not doing anything about those ambitions, it felt like he hit me upside the head with a 2×4.

“Then do something.”

I got home from work that day and immediately started researching colleges with good English programs. I knew that I couldn’t just sit around and expect life to change me, that if I wanted to achieve my dreams I at least had to start down that path myself.

I thought of that experience this weekend, as I was grumbling once again about my inability to get anywhere with my very basic daily life goals. Living with someone like Carl, who sees what he wants and then figures out how to make it work, and then does it, is very exhausting for someone whose natural inclination is to wait for God to drop life changes into her lap without her lifting a finger.

This isn’t the same situation as my decision to go to college instead of twiddling my thumbs waiting to be discovered by someone who would want to publish my wonderful books, though. I wish I could just do it, just go ahead and make the changes. But the problem here is that I just don’t have the energy to change. When I talk about being tired all the time … even forcing my brain to deviate enough to think about sitting down in the middle of the day and read a story to the kids is an effort, much less doing it.

I have a great schedule written up and posted on the fridge. It’s flexible, and basic, and pretty much the best daily schedule I’ve created since I started making schedules for myself however many years ago. And have I been able to stick with it once since the day I wrote it?

No.

I’ve written this entire post, and now I’m not even sure if I’m going to publish it or not. Because what’s the point? To have people metaphorically pat my head and say “there, there”? In hopes that someone will give me a magic cure, something that will make me suddenly able to do everything I want to do? Neither of those are what I want.

But I guess maybe I will publish it, not in hopes of being soothed, but because I strongly suspect there are others out there in the same boat as I am, and maybe knowing that they aren’t the only one floundering will bring them a small measure of comfort. And because sometimes, the very act of sharing one’s struggles can give one strength.

And because, frankly, if I’ve sat here for an hour typing out my frustrations, I don’t just want to hit “delete.” I have little enough to show for my days as it is, I don’t need to lose the few things that I do get done!

Life Talk, seasons, TV, Watch, writing

I Do Not Make A Good Invalid

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You would think that three straight days on the couch at the end of February would be a great chance to get caught up on my finish-first-draft-before-March goal, wouldn’t you?

Wrong.

Turns out three straight days on the couch is really good for re-watching Firefly, reading library books that don’t actually interest me very much, and fretting about the dishes and laundry.

Sigh.

I wasn’t really sick – just some weird hormonal imbalance stuff – so I also spent most of the time feeling guilty that I was doing nothing when I could, technically, have been up and around and Being Productive. Never mind that said productivity would have resulted in me getting sick, likely, and for much longer than three days. I’m not particularly good at taking care of myself.

Nor, it appears, am I particularly good at creativity when under (self) enforced rest.

I did manage to get a tiny bit more work done on Baby Niece’s quilt. With luck, she might get it in time for her first birthday next October.

On the bright side, I am doing much better today, and can even get off the couch long enough to wash a few dishes and fold a few pieces of laundry at a time, and maybe, just maybe (don’t jinx it, Louise!) get a few words scribbled in between.

Fingers crossed!

(Carl and the girls are heading out to get groceries this afternoon, and on the bottom of the list I included, in CAPS, a request for potted daffodils or crocuses or SOMETHING spring-like. I do love winter, but my eyes are craving color.)

Scrolling through last March's photos, apparently my desire for daffodils is not limited to this year.
Scrolling through last March’s photos, apparently my desire for daffodils is not limited to this year.