Three ways I think about writing when I'm not writing {Just One Paragraph 13/30}

I show up to write a paragraph tonight after watching Silver Linings Playbook. It was good, though it wasn't what I expected, and now it's later than I expected. Still, I've done this small practice for enough days now that it feels like a habit. Enough days that I show up even late, just because. My fingers following words across the keyboard, right out to the edges of my thoughts.

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I scribble notes as we're talking; our weekly conversation about the book we're gradually outlining. I draw lines, connecting notes, a geometry of ideas. Pattern recognition. I try to reconcile myself with the fact that I still don't have make enough time to write regularly for this project. Then I try make up for it by thinking about it in all the in-between times, my iPhone full with audio notes, driving to and fro. I haven't transcribed them yet.

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I mow the lawn in concentric circles, my thoughts circling with me, sifting, growing steady with the repetition. Then it surfaces: the fiction story, the one that I read a snippet of aloud to my writing group, so rough that the characters barely lift off the page...and yet. I can't shake the characters. They have the makings of a story that matters. Next I catch myself thinking, "Why am I thinking about this fiction stuff, when I've got so many other things I should be writing?" I catch myself. Should. I make plans for fiction. Hours of it. Fuck should.

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Today {Just One Paragraph 12/20}

      
Today, nothing quite lined up, though there were many moments: picking wild berries, seeing friends at the South End Truck Stop, and watching Bean watch the glass blowers, his eyes wide, his whole body watching. And there was last night when my writer crew gathered around my dining room table with wine and good chocolate, ears listening for the heart of my story. Still, today was just today. And I am trying to let it be enough.

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Today
Today I'm flying low and I'm not saying a word. I'm letting all the voodoos of ambition sleep.
The world goes on as it must, the bees in the garden rumbling a little, the fish leaping, the gnats getting eaten. And so forth.
But I'm taking the day off. Quiet as a feather. I hardly move though really I'm traveling a terrific distance.
Stillness. One of the doors into the temple.
- By Mary Oliver

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Hello sweet August, here are all my hopes + dreams {Just One Paragraph 11/30}

             Everyone, all over the world we woke up today to August. And here in the Northern Hemisphere, that shift marks the ripest month of summer: blackberry time, the county fair, picnics along the river. I asked yesterday what your intentions are for this new month, and am going to break paragraph form tonight to write my own list. These are the things I want to manifest from this sweet month:
:: A last hurrah dinner party :: Winning the project (yes, the one that counts the most) :: A new haircut :: Poems read to me by T a blanket in a field of grasses (and maybe also wine + fried chicken + sauteed green beans and orzo) :: The view from the top of the ferris wheel :: A goodbye fire in the backyard :: Collaborating with the boys to print an Instagram book of the things we love about this place that we've called home :: A nighttime walk listening to the owls one last time :: A successful closing :: A successful move (and movers to do the hard part) :: New paint on new walls :: Shopping for school clothes :: Getting Bean's first cello (he'll start playing in the orchestra this year!) :: A new commuter bike :: A new neighborhood to walk in :: A blackberry pie
Also, because Anna said so, here are my favorite posts from last August:
There Is No Blueprint For Everything The Heart Of Things The Truth And The Stories
What are your favorite posts from last August? And really, what are your intentions (and hopes and dreams) for this new month. (Magic happens when you write things down you know.)

Night magic + August intentions {Just One Paragraph 10/30}

Tonight it's about unlikely combinations, sweet red wine, chocolate with salt, the cat pacing on my studio desk as I work late, pausing now to slip in a paragraph as night walks up to the window and whispers: "stay." I fall prey. Is there really another way? Does morning really offer this? The whirr of crickets, jazz, the soft, fluttering flirtation of moths against the screen kissing the lamplight on the other side that falls concentric circles; the cat's purr riding up one side of the night and down the other. Is morning really more than this, with it's new rose and blush and bleary eyes. Coffee, a day new? Does anything really measure against this time when day disrobes, when hours unwind uninterrupted. Who am I to claim radical sleep experiments. Who am I to say: we should all be getting more sleep (even though we should.) I was born at night. It's a hard habit to break.  
{Tomorrow is August. What are your intentions for this new month?}

Feeling at the edges of myself today {Just One Paragraph 9/30}

I woke bleary and bumbling and uncertain with a blazing headache. Out of the blue. Light sensitive. Sore throat. All of it out. Yesterday afternoon, riding hard on my bike, and then this morning: sick. Who knows why? My friend texted, wisely, "Its a sign to refocus on you for just a bit." So I called off meetings, crawled back under the covers and spent most of the day in a half-dream state, half in my body, half out. I felt myself at the edges of my skin, a layer of dream overlaying my real world as it passed by in slow motion: the dog coming and going, email notifications, T on the phone (working from home today), the boys coming home (from a sleepover at their grandparents) and crawling into bed, their fingers sticky, their eyes wide and grinning. I felt permeable. I could feel how I am a creature of story, a figment of muscle and dream. I could feel the way I am only here, and then not here, only real and then not real: in my body, and then out of it, in spirit spreading out across the space and beyond it. Have you ever felt that way? At the periphery of yourself, where you understand that you are at once more and less than all the things you say you are, and all the things you imagine.

Here we are today {Just One Paragraph 8/30}

He could have been Bean, ten years taller, driving fast after midnight for whatever reason. The police can't say. The autopsy hasn't yet been done. Driving fast, across the meridian, into a metal culvert lurking at the side of the road, the way so many do these days after the flash flooding and weeks of rain: waiting for road crews to excavate ground and lower their silver-ribbed bellies into place, making way, with wide mouths for unexpected storms. His van catapulted, cartwheeled, caterwauled. Hit a telephone pole. Dead on impact. He was just 17, a new high school graduate, the papers say, and though I didn't know him, I've likely seen him around. He could have been the tow-headed kid riding a four wheeler across the fields belonging to his family's dairy farm at the end of the road. He could have been the boy with freckles standing in line with his girlfriend tonight at the grocery store, buying soda and candy, staring with the bored look of every boy in the checkout line. He could have been any boy. Every boy. This one on his way to Marines for basic training to go wherever such brave, foolhardy boys go, toting guns, their lives and the lives of others in their hands. We drove by on our way to donuts yesterday, saw the kids crowded around the newly replaced telephone pole writing love notes in sharpies, sticking flowers at the base, even as the old one, split in half with the impact, being carried off on a tow-truck past fields of blooming Queen Anne's Lace and Black Eyed Susans and also poison parsnip, that looks, to the untrained eye to be a lovely golden firework of blossoms. We never know, do we? We can never anticipate the danger, the wisdom, the wide terrain of possibility that makes the topography of our lives. T winced driving past and reached out. I grabbed his hand. We looked back in the rearview, the boys laughing, anticipating donuts. Sweetness. Today, there are cars gathered at the farm at the end of the road. Too many to be dinner guests. There is a lump in my throat as we ride by, that swells, even I feel my body lithe and balancing on my light bike, my life impossibly beautiful and real, pulse measured, cadence marked. Here we are today. Here you are.

  {Go love the people you love.}

Living life all the way to it's edges {Just One Paragraph 7/30}

Yesterday I didn't write. I meant to. I thought about it. But I never never managed to slip away from the rowdy menagerie that is my family on the weekend, and then I was out late out with with friends to celebrate the first quarterly Renegade Writers Collective reading event (so proud of those gals!) and take in a sneak preview of the Moth main stage event that will be coming to Burlington in the Fall, and then more drinks and general revelry under the warm night sky. So. here I am, making up for lost words so to speak. And here's what I've been thinking today: that this work of showing up is more about the practice than the end result. More about the act of writing, than about the paragraphs accumulated one after the next.
So here I am, still rubbing my eyes at 11 am, catching up for my lost post, and feeling the weight of lost sleep, as the boys begin to wrangle the material of our lives into boxes (if we're to move, we must pack, it seems.) It's quite a slow-start morning after a late night that was entirely counter to my whole "two hours before midnight" experiment, and though today I'm paying the price (and feeling rather old) I'll never stop wanting to live life all the way out to its edges. And just as I'm totally down with this whole sleep thing, and am definitely planning a radical sleep experiment, I'm also avid about inviting the unexpected. Serendipity flirts at the edge of random. Creativity emerges when things break from the norm.

Some days I can't believe how good I have it {Just One Paragraph 6/30}

I worked from home today, with the boys playing at my side, running wild in the yard and then coming in hungry and asking for snacks. I let them eat peanut butter from the jar, made cinnamon sugar toast, poured milk, parsed out handfuls of fat blueberries, and then listened to their giggles as I worked. I finished a client project, which felt good, but also: there went the day. The hours I'd hoped would be spent writing write flat out (a rough first draft of the synopsis of the book I'm writing with Dan Blank; the time I imagined I would spend loafing in the sun, going to the library, or sketching out the fiction piece I have in my head right now.) But so it goes. Each day brings the unexpected bounty of it's particular hours, and with early afternoon this day brought T. We all went running to him, a hundred kisses. Even the dog. Everyone in a knot of snuggles in the entry way, laughing. We do love being a family together. It's one of the best things in the world, the way we fit together, the four of us making this ruckus, gangling, goofy, snuggly, affectionate bunch. "Let's adventure!" Bean said, and so after I took a quick sprint of a run down the road and back, and T grilled burgers with garlic and parsley and oregano, we went to Richmond where the playground always welcomes us and the bakery always offers something good. And then T and I sat with the dog under our legs, sipping dark coffee and eating sweet treats, and talking (and kissing) as we watched the boys play as the sun slanted through the trees at the edge of the world. The morning started out cold and grey. There was work. Then this. Boys. Sun. Sweetness. Some days I can't believe how good I have it.

Considering the meaning of "enough sleep" {Just One Paragraph 5/30}

This morning I'm paying for the fact that last night I was up late. Passed midnight. Into the single digits that technically counted as today. It's my kryptonite, staying up late after the kids are asleep and the house is quietly breathing, to write, or wander the internet reading (un)remarkable things. Those uninterrupted hours sing a siren song in my head. But on a hike with a friend today I mused out loud: what would happen if we all just slept more? There are plenty of studies that prove that we need more sleep than we're getting, and that enough sleep make us more imaginative, innovative, not to mention better lovers, friends, and parents. But as my friend put it, she too stays up late to do uninterrupted and often aimless and unimportant after her little ones are in bed, because it makes her feel more human. Still, she admitted, on the other, waking up after only 5 hours of sleep inevitably results in feeling even less human. A terrible conundrum, really. A tumbling domino effect. This too-little sleep situation. Hormones, sex drive, creativity, intelligence, athletic performance, curiosity and patience all suffer from diminishing returns as we night-owl it, hunched in front of screens, soaking in the quiet, or creating, or letting our minds wonder where they will. But what if we got more sleep? Like, radically more? Eight hours instead of six; nine even? I can't put my finger on why I'm so resistant, except for the fact that after 8 straight years of parenting little ones when sleep was never something I could control, staying up is almost a defense mechanism. And also, there is a childish part of me that wants to run out of the room yelling with my ears plugged at the mere thought of earlier bedtimes--to admit that I should be going to bed earlier would mean, in fact, that I am getting old. It would also mean that my mother was right. It turns out my mother was right about many things, and it's like she's right about this in particular. "One hour before midnight is worth two after" she'd always admonish. Ben Franklin backs her up. "Early to bed, early to rise...." I'm considering doing a week of radical sleep experimentation. But before I do, I need you to weigh in.

How much sleep do you get on average every night?   When do you typically go to bed?   Do you think you'd benefit from more sleep?

Discuss!

A birds-eye view of this right now {Just One Paragraph 4/30}

This morning I realized that July is almost over, which startled me, because really, didn't summer just start? I've been experiencing this incredulity at an ever-increasing rate: at time's passing, at the long-legged bodies of my sons, at the way my eyes have accumulated crows feet and the furrow between my brows is there for good. When did all of this happen? Time is a trickster. A torrent one minute, then a slow as honey crawl the next. Some weeks pass with laborious slowness, but days are never long enough. Other weeks pass in a blur, but hours stretch out for an eternity. The constant, it seems, is that years go in an instant. Each one short. Shorter. And here I am at the apex of another summer, feeling the way the last days of this particular month make up a strange equation of endings and beginning's for me. Summer is waning, yes, that. But also: my father died this month eleven years ago, on the same day as my half birthday which is two days from today. And if I were calculating my rate of success based on averages, I'd say I was behind, at least on my birthday list. Half the year gone, and only 10 crossed off. (Of those, I'd never thought I'd have ridden a carousel, but that happened, quite by chance two weekends ago at the Shelburne Museum; and I can almost cross off paragliding, because I've found the perfect place for lessons and am now just waiting for the right convergence of wind conditions and babysitting to high-tail it there with T for a day jumping off into blue sky.) But the thing is, success isn't about averages at all. It's not about steady progress rates or past performance. It's about the process, and seeing the way things map out wide and large. About setting goals and gravitating towards them, even as new projects take shape, and new goals emerge. A book. A company. Another book of personal essays in it's inkling phase. A kindergartener. A third-grader. A rekindled sense of utter in-loveness with my guy. And I can't help but wonder, if my father were alive today, what he might say with his birds-eye view, grinning at the life I've made.

    I'm curious, when do you take stock of your progress from a bird's eye view? Do you have any times throughout the year that you make it a ritual (like a half birthday) to stop looking at the small stuff, and take in the big picture instead?

The hours run out far sooner than my ambition {Just One Paragraph 3/30}

The day began with rain. Not the violent kind from a few weeks ago, but the soft kind that calls for standing in doorways and inhaling the petrichor. It was the kind of day that called for extra coffee, for laughter at Study Hall between work, for a gluten free macaroon around 2pm, and later after the rain let up and the sky spread with sun, for heaps of texts sent back and forth, things sorted, aligned, mapped out for tomorrow. It was the kind of day that found me arriving hungry at the doorway of home, to be greeted to the smell of Indian chicken with kale and sweet red peppers, fresh mango, cucumbers and rose; and also the sweet embrace of Sprout who always comes running when I return. A hero's welcome. "Mommy!" He exclaims, his entire body dancing with delight. He wraps his arms around my neck. After dinner, the day softened. In the gloaming light we moved to the backyard, sipping beer and rose, watching the boys play under blankets and the dog catch bugs. Then, after stories with the boys (Bean and I are reading the second Mary Poppins book, after a lovely diversion into the Mixed Up Files of Mrs. Basil E. Frakenwhiler, which was a truly fantastic read, and for sure one of my favorites this year) I slipped off for a while to listen to music, paint my nails, and mull over projects. Every day, every single day the hours run out far sooner than my ambition. I'm grateful for this, even as I always feel myself fall short. Grateful to wake up hungry and eager for the day, and also to find myself at the other side of the day, still hungering for this sweet life, this work, these words, these hours.

At the end of the day all I ever want to do is write {Just One Paragraph 3/30}

Because I love the sound, the stridulating rise and fall that signals the beginning of summer's end, I spend five minutes looking up the insects that make it. The insects, whose call is as familiar to me as the word 'home', that have gone unnamed for years. For granted. A given. Until today when they start just at twilight. First one. Then few. Then many, all at once a rhythmic ruckus chorus in the trees, and at the horizon the moon kisses the mountains and then rises languidly into an indigo sky. I find that they are katydids. Specifically, the gladiator meadow katydid. And tonight their whirring symphony lifts through the warm air, filters in through my studio window screen, and brings with it the sweet scent of grass and ripening berries. With it, the stars come out. And then gradually the whole world folds close, until it is just here: illuminated under the incandescent light above me. My studio desk scattered with pens and cables and empty water jars and books.The evening hours are dwindling. The balance of available time vs. to-dos elusive for another day. And always when I begin, when I show up just here at the keyboard, it's the same: at the end of the day all I ever want to do is write.

The Things I've Grown Used To Around Here {Just one Paragraph: 2/30}

The moon is round and bright, climbing up through the in the branches of the quivering Norway birch outside my studio window. I've grown used to that tree; to watching it bend in storms, and flutter in the slightest breeze. To the way, when the autumn comes, it turns pure gold before coyly letting the season's leaves fall to the ground, laying bare her silver branches to the gathering cold and shortening days that winter always brings. I've grown used to the way my studio sill, from which I watch that tree, is always cluttered with jars filled paint brushes. With shells. With small canvases to paint (and often the cat finds here way there too.) I've grown used to the wild roses that bloom beside the front door. And also to the dirt road that carries us to and from our house. To the ritual of walking down it with the boys. To finding wild berries: raspberries, grapes, blackberries, Eastern prickly gooseberries and also elderberries that are still blooming in clouds of lacy white. Today, Clover went running out ahead of us, then veered off when she smelled something in the hedgerow, and for the sake of all of us would not return until she'd flushed out every living thing: startled red-wing blackbirds, small brown rabbits, a flock of gold finches that lifted like yellow sparks. I've grown used to the sloping grassy hill at the back of the house where the boys sat today facing each other on beach towels warming in the sun after playing until their lips were blue in the pool (the blue plastic kind that stands improbably 36 inches above ground, and is by far the best investment we've made this summer because Sprout is learning how to swim of his own accord, begging to be in the pool more than he is out of it.) It is the hill where my book began. The hill that, when everything feels like it may just be falling apart, I've gone to lie upon countless times, face upterned to the sky with my heart beating uncertainly in the boat of my ribs, until the steady pull of the earth rightens me. I've felt the earth spinning from that place. I've watched shooting stars fall from the heavens there, and played with both my boys when they were babies. Today I'm grateful for this last month here among familiar things, and also for this small ritual of a paragraph of noticing daily.

On developing a writing practice:

>     It doesn’t matter what you write, it matters that you write.
It doesn’t matter if there are many good sentences. It just matters that in showing up you’ve cleared the way for a single good sentence.
There is also simply the fact of habit. That in creating it, in something done everyday at the same time no matter what, you develop some reflexive muscle for doing your work. It becomes automatic in a way, though not necessarily easier.
There will always be the in-bed bargaining. The first minutes of sleepy awakeness. But there will also be a goal streak to maintain. A promise with yourself to keep, and simpler than that: a habit that pulls you softly upright in the dark. That carries you to your chair with tea and stumbling fingers to begin.

{1}

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Start with where you are.

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#justshowup

Inspiration for your weekend:

{Printable Download}

Because showing up matters. I think it matters more most days than having a good idea. Everyone has good ideas. It's how you show up for them, daily, that makes them into something real and tangible and great. And showing up doesn't mean doing something epic. It means doing something small, daily.

It's the ritual, the repetition, the cultivation of habit that ends up propelling you forward. It's the fact that eventually, if you show up every day for ten minutes and just stare at your computer screen or your blank canvas or your notebook or whatever it is, you'll eventually start to create. And the momentum of that daily act of showing up will become a cumulative creative force.

It's hard though, to do this. There are plenty of days when admittedly, I make every excuse in the book about why I don't have enough time, energy, clarity, focus, whatever...to wake up, to show up, to be intentional with my time--particularly when my days are scheduled to the brim, and leisure time is scarce. But that's the point: to spend those five minutes even when those ten minutes seem insignificant.

10 minutes focusing on a singular goal. 10 minutes writing flash fiction. 10 minutes doing sun salutes. 10 minutes meditating. 10 minutes journaling. 10 minutes making art. 10 minutes behind your camera lens. 10 minutes _____________. How will you show up for minutes today?

Just show up: What I learned while writing my book

One of the questions that I keep getting asked is: "how did you make it happen?" The book. As a mama of little boys. In graduate school. In the midst of a career change.

All of it.

And I've been thinking a lot about that; about what actually went into the process of dreaming something, and then dreaming it real, gradually and with persistence, despite the fact that nearly everything in my life suggested that making a book was a ludicrous idea. I mean really, who sets about the dream of making a book with a infant in tow, and a career up in the air?

That's something I was asked at least a dozen times when I started out, and I lived daily with the fact that the whole thing might fail.

Still I showed up: willing to fail, and willing, also, to ask for help.

More than anything, that is what I hope readers will get from A Field Guide To Now.

  I hope they'll read it both as proof, and as a reference manual for achieving extraordinary creativity under ordinary circumstances.

Because really, truly, the biggest things begin with the smallest of creative acts.

  ...And both making the book, and the book itself are about the practice of showing up.

Showing up daily with intention.

Showing up with notebook in hand.

Showing up with eyes wide open.

Showing up even when you don't feel like it.

Showing up even when all you accomplish somedays is simply the act of showing up.

  What will you show up for today?