Critical Friendships

As I finish my first unit of my Masters, I have been thinking about the benefits of critical friends. And then the pros and cons of internet groups compared to face-to-face groups, for many of us this is going to come down to how as individuals we interact better with different groups.

Online critical friendships can be great in that you can take longer to look over comments and suggestions before you need to react. You can even go over them several times. Your work or the work you are reading/critiquing is written clearly in front of you and you can read over it several times to be sure that you have gleaned the importance and meaning of every word. But your critics are in some ways an unknown at the other end of a line somewhere. You can’t see their reaction, their initial response to your words. It takes time to get responses and queries answered.

I have found that I need to be sure that my critical friends are real people. In one of the first meetings I attended with my current group, my writerly friend had a short story that he wondered if it would elicit a particular response, but was not going to tell me what he hoped that response was. So he read and I patiently listened, allowing the words to wash over me and as he finished I reached for a tissue to dry my eyes.

‘What sort of response do you want?’ I blubbed.

‘That one is fine.’

It was a very moving story, and it gave him more to see my initial response to hearing it than he would have got if I had emailed with my response. I did read it again after some small edits, and it was emailed through, and I sobbed out loud at my desk. It’s ok, my work colleagues already think I’m nuts. But I could email back that it worked well, same response.

It is more direct to be sitting with a group of people. I find it more helpful to be able to ask immediately if something works or not, to ask how to improve it, such as ‘What if…if she did this…or that?’

Each group is different too and different ways work for different people. My current group like to read out their work for comment. I have belonged to other groups where we had copies of what was being read so that we could follow along, or it was emailed out ahead of time and we could just work through comments during the group time.

If you have the chance to join a critical friendship, think about what might work best for you and don’t be afraid to try something different. I prefer the face-to-face interaction but I’m learning the benefits of online friendships too.

Happy Scribbling.

Searching for something you already have

Some days I go in search of inspiration. I eagerly click through my favourite blogs hoping that today’s post will have some magical content to reconnect me to my flagging muse.

Sometimes I find it; sometimes I find it somewhere unexpected. Unfortunately this is not usually the case and I don’t find what I’m looking for out there. I need to find it in here. Generally I am able to sit at the computer every morning and bang out a good 1000 words without waiting for the muse to find me. But every now and then I need reminding that I am able to do this.

I am at that point today…searching. Sitting in my day job office I can hear a piano in the distance, a busker somewhere in the city playing. It is beautiful, the parts that I can hear, but I’m not getting all of it. I am straining through the noise of the traffic and shoppers, and the different pitches of the pedestrian walk. At times I can’t hear it at all and then several notes fight through the other noises to get to me. That is just enough for me to know that if I was to take a quiet few minutes I could possibly write something.

I did find a post about productivity – volume and output. Not just in words, but in the number of works. And it struck me that I may not be as productive as I could be. In fact I’m certain of it. I could be writing more often, I could be adding to my very poor list of finished works (currently at one) and increasing my chances of getting published. The more I write the better I get and so my chances improve.

If I am able to publish enough I can spend my whole day writing, not just thinking about writing. Then when I get home I’m generally too tired, time poor etc to write anything. Quite often I miss the window. I know I do. The house is quiet, the kids are settled and I think I could go now, I could get a lot done, but I wait and I potter with other things, and I watch just five more minutes of some rubbish on the box and then the window is closed and I couldn’t even if I wanted to. But if I had moved to the study the moment I had the thought then I would happily tap away at the keyboard lost in some wondrous world of my own making for an hour or two before it even occurred to me that I was too tired to be there.

For one of my courses I am currently between units, so I have a little less pressure this week. My aim it to spend the time that I was spending on study, on my writing instead.

Happy Scribbling

The Gardener

Over the last couple of weeks I have been very busy, again, or is it still? I am trying to do so much and it seems that the more writing I do the more ideas I get. So in an attempt to try and increase my sanity I have hired a gardener.

‘Wow!’ you think. ‘A gardener, oh for such luxuries.’

Or did you think, ‘Yeah, right. Her dad pops round with the mower once a week.’

We have to be so careful with our words to ensure that the right message is being passed on. So that readers fully understand the story that is happening in our heads. That transfer to paper can be a real killer for any story.

The truth of the above statement about the gardener is that I have hired a company to pop around on a regular (and depends on the season as to how regularly he does pop around) to mow the lawn and trim the edges.

It may not seem like much, but it was one of those little things that were starting to tip the scale on my sanity. I was getting more and more worked up that I couldn’t get it all done on my own. So I decided to focus on what I can do, what I want to do and outsource some of the things I can’t do. And it isn’t that I can’t mow the lawn. I’m one of those fiercely independent types constantly trying to prove that I can do anything I need to. It just means less stress. And I’m all for that.

The other little bugbear over the last couple of weeks has been the state of the house. Not that it was that bad, not a call in the ‘current affairs type programs’ to look at what she is inflicting on her children type of bad; just a little overwhelming. Piles of notes, books, ‘artwork’, ‘treasures’ found in a variety of places and carried home, study notes (not always in the study), novel notes (again not always in the study). So I spent some time moving things to where they should live and ruthlessly disposing of the rubbish hiding amongst the piles disguised as useful. Unfortunately my daughter has inherited my gene for “let’s hold onto that because you just don’t know when it will be useful, wanted, needed etc”.

I am now feeling calmer, cleaner and more on top of things. Less time stressing and more time writing. It is how the world should be.

Happy scribbling.

Truce

The cat and I have made a truce. We fight a lot, usually, and we are both to blame. Well. OK. She’s a cat and so it’s mostly my fault. But only mostly. I’m not taking all of the blame. My fault is that she spends too much time home alone.

I have had a super productive weekend. Two assignments completed, next week’s lectures and tutorials read and absorbed, next week’s tutorial assignment drafted.  There is still a lot I want to get done but I’m well under way.

Most of this I did with the study door closed. As soon as I opened it she was in, and on the keyboard, or nudging me and breaking my concentration. This was followed by yelling and removal of cat and door slamming and possibly some sighing.

I know, I can hear you saying it, she’s just a cat.

So, in a flash of brilliance, and I have those sometimes, I put her snuggle house on the desk. And it was like magic. She was straight in and sitting quietly and we were both happy. I could work uninterrupted and she could rest knowing I was just there, within sight.

Now how do I get the same with the child do you suppose?

Smelling the Way...

Every time I pour hot water over a Bushels teabag I think of my grandfather. Every single time. I am instantly transported back to the old kitchen, him sitting at the head of the heavy kitchen table stirring his sickly sweet, hot black tea.

I don’t have mine the same. In fact I have milk and only one sugar, where he had three. But that initial smell of hot tea is just the same. It makes me smile, some days it makes me sad and other days it is only part of a second that the thought is in my head but it still appears. It doesn’t happen with other brands of tea either. Only Bushels. It must have been the brand he drank, but I don’t remember.

Funny how the nose can be such a link to the past. That sense of smell.  My grandfather died nearly twenty years ago and didn’t live in the house I visualise him in for the last ten years of his life. Is there something significant about my early childhood visits to that house, or did he change tea brands when he left the old place?

I had a similar feeling this morning when I dropped my daughter at school. The main school building is a similar style to one of the primary schools I attended, although in a different part of Australia, but they all smell the same. Is it a primary school thing? Is it related to the red brick building or the children in it? And surely we were different kinds of kids to those of today?

Smell is so important and can lend much to our writing. A smell can evoke a feeling, transport us to our childhood terrors, or joys, or wonders. It can remind us of lives lost, loves lost and new lives given. I shall try to ensure my senses include smell in my writing today. And while I’m out and about I will try to see what else I can smell and where it takes me. Just thinking about where the two scents from above have taken me has also provided some ideas for stories. Where will your nose take you today?

Happy Scribbles

Time Poor

Do you ever get the feeling that you have taken on too much? Don't get me wrong, I love everything I am doing at the moment but over the last few weeks I have struggled trying to get everything done that I have wanted to. And so when something had to give, I'm afraid it was the blog.
It may not have been the best choice to go. But as the assignments, weekly submissions, lectures, tutorials, exercises, quality family time and the need to write daily piles up, somehow the blog fell off the list. "No one really reads it anyway," I may have comforted myself with at one point. And the only scribbles making it to the kitchen door at the moment are shopping lists and reminders for housework, and then I'm behind with the vacuuming.

I don't want to sound like I'm whinging. Because I really am enjoying all of my writing at the moment. We have set some challenging tasks for my writers group that have been lots of fun. My fantasy novel is moving along reasonably well, despite me not quite knowing how I am going to get to the end yet. I have some small changes/edits for my first novel to complete and that can be submitted to a publisher (that in itself is scary, exciting and pushed down the list a little). My Masters course is fantastic, I'm learning so much and even though some units are a little more challenging, I am loving every minute.

So, I have a heavy workload at the moment but not only am I enjoying the work I am doing at the moment, it is what I want to do, to get me where I want to be.

Happy Scribbling

It Only Takes 10 Minutes

Taking 10 minutes to jot down some ideas can be very useful when you don’t have as much time to come up with an idea or simply as a brainstorming exercise. This could be for blog posts, I recently listed 4 or 5 topics I could discuss with some dot points just to get me started; some short story ideas, different names or places. They may not be used straight away but they all help to jog the muse when she doesn’t want to play. There are times that I have ideas all week to blog about but when it comes to Sunday morning they all evaporate.  With some ideas already there it is just a matter of picking one and fleshing it out, or reviewing the list might spark another idea.

As part of this process I have started thinking about what I want to achieve with my writing next year. Not to start but just to think about things. What did I always want to do that I haven’t yet. What has been recommended as a good idea to improve my skills? What can I think of to improve my skills or productivity? Is it entering competitions, another course, joining a new group (maybe a readers group)?

On a recent lunch time outing I steered away from the bookshops, in case I saw something to add to my reading pile. And chances are high; I always find something I want. Instead I found myself in a wondrous shop filled with stationery. Another little problem of mine and of course I made a purchase.

My find was a handy planner, come note book, that fits easily in my handbag. I am using it to list all of my goals, annual, monthly, weekly, daily and measure how they are going. And of course these all relate to my long term goals.

Truth be told I am a planner anyway. I like to have an idea about what I want to achieve each but sometimes all the little stuff gets in the way of the bigger picture. I wrote recently about energy management and time management and they are important but it is also worth reminding yourself about the overall goal, the long term ones that you are doing the daily tasks to achieve to ensure you are on track and that they are still what you want to achieve.

I will review the ideas I’m mapping out for next year over the next few months to ensure they are working towards my long term goals and that they are reasonable and achievable. But I don’t want to spend the time I should be doing other things planning for next year. A friend of mine, many years ago, would spend all of his study time mapping out his study and in the end there was little time left to do any actual study.

Goal setting is a tool to help you achieve what you want to achieve, don't let it get in the way of the goals. A lot can be achieved in just 10 minutes.

Happy Scribbling