Move in the direction of my dreams......

Henry David Thoreau wrote, "If one advances confidently in the direction of his dreams, and endeavors to live the life which he has imagined, he will meet with a success unexpected in common hours." Today on a social networking site I chatted with fellow writers about not mapping out a plan for my manuscript.

Well, first I should tell you last night I pulled an old manuscript out of the filing cabinet drawer and decided I wanted to finish writing it. What I fail to realize, yet somehow am able to teach, is that there already is a plan I just have to do the action of suiting up and showing up at the laptop to fulfill the plan.

It was humbling to pull the manuscript out of the drawer, blow the proverbial dust off the pages, open the cover of the notebook and see my own handwriting. I could barely read what I had written my handwriting was so terrible. I started this manuscript in NY right after I ruptured the tendon in my thumb. I could barely hold a pen at the time let alone try and write.

I had it in my head then that computers were ruining the writing craft and the real literary masters were still writing with pen and paper. I was out of my mind setting myself up for failure even at thinking the thought let alone living it. I moved to MA in 2004 and I started writing this manuscript 3 or 4 years earlier. That's over a decade of my life gone filled with missed opportunity.

But yesterday in my blog post I wrote I wanted to learn how to write the opposite of negative emotions and that sparked me to pull out the manuscript. I never stopped believing in the project I just stopped believing in me. Yesterday, because of my out of Africa friend who is an incredible cheerleader I made different choices. I made the choice to try and renew something I once cared passionately about.

I also chose to talk to other writers about where I struggle in the middle of the story. My struggle is never with the beginning or the end those parts come easy. I have hundreds of beginnings and endings. I chose to share a vignette of the main character with you last night in my blog entry as Exercise #1. I have made the decision to share with each new post a vignette of my characters taken from the manuscript as it unfolds daily.

I am learning consistency and the pacing of time which is fast when I don't want it to be and slow when I don't want it to be. Time never seems to be right for me so I have to do things in spite of the time. All that is required of me is to put forth the effort to do all I can today which is to be a stronger writer and person then I was the day before.

I can't control the outcome of my writing, but I can control whether or not I write. There are things in my life I let prevent me from writing. I can't force myself to let them go any faster than I am and I can't insist the calmness comes back into my mind any faster than it is going to either. All I can do is keep as busy as possible while time takes care of all the letting go and restoring of calmness in me. Pulling out the manuscript is a productive way of distracting me so time can carry out its mission in my life. 

All I have to be is willing to participate in my own life, willing to change the things that keep me comfortable and live outside the box I have created as my life. I have to have hope instead of doubt. I have to have faith instead of fear. I have to choose to live instead of remaining stuck. I have to make time for an old project I have failed to make time for.

I must move in the direction of my dreams, live the life I have always imagined and my success will be more than I expected........

Exercise #2

I left Lee’s apartment without really remembering the trot down the rickety stairs leading me into the cold night air. I was still warm from her embrace as I walked past store fronts, cafes and restaurants. I felt as though someone was following me, but I couldn’t hear footsteps. When I turned my head the shadows all stood still; all I could see was steam rising from the drainage grates. I had hoped when I turned around I would see Lee, but there was no one there. My heart sank a bit; I knew she would never follow me. She would never follow me anywhere.

My disappointment gave into the strong aroma of fresh brewed coffee from a cafeteria up ahead. In just a few strides I was at the counter ordering coffee looking for a table. The cafeteria was more crowded than I was comfortable with.  I wasn’t the only one who couldn’t afford to be here.

I was handed a cup and I left the little bit of change I had on the counter. I stood frozen in the crowd looking for a seat. As I stood still a tall gentleman with black rimmed glasses walked up to me touching my cup as if to take it from me. He smiled at the expression of surprise on my face while asking me to join him at his table. He was alone waiting for time to pass. He had a meeting at eight o’clock.

Our conversation was casual, but directed at more than the weather. He felt sad at my plight to find work and I felt admiration for him having a professional life, a career. Time passed quickly and we were both headed to an eight o’clock meeting. He asked if I stopped at the cafeteria often.  I said it was possible I could make more of an effort to stop in and then we left our table.

He put me into a cab, gave the cabby fare and told him to take me wherever I wanted to go. I had shoved the address of my eight o’clock meeting in the pocket of my coat. I fumbled for a minute as the cabby pulled away from the curb. I read the address out loud fighting my want to turn around. I wanted to, but I couldn’t. I wanted to look back and watch him get smaller and smaller as the cabby fought his way into traffic, but I didn’t. I just sat still, eyes forward, thinking about the last two hours of my life.

Can it be done and Can I do it.........

Mother Teresa wrote, "Kind words can be short and easy to speak, but their echoes are endless." I read this today and the words stopped me dead in my tracks. If kind words echo endlessly than what do angry words do?

In every aspect of life there are two questions that must always be answered according to Annie Dillard: "Can it be done?" and "Can I do it?" These are the questions that have plagued my life. Anything that involves doing something for someone else I am absolutely confident to the point of arrogance that it can be done and I can do it. Anything that involves me alone I run and wallow in self-doubt until I have no choice but to ask for help and to reach out if I am ever going to change the pattern of my writing life.

I have a friend in Africa who has been reading and talking to me about my blog and she mentioned today that I need an array of emotion just not fear-based emotion. I agreed with her I had been thinking along the same lines, but thinking and doing are two completely different things. For so long all I have had is failure and fear of failure. What does it mean to write joy and happiness and laughter? What do those emotions and actions feel like?

In all of my entries up until today I was writing what I know. I was comfortable inside the box in my little world, in my little apartment, in my little life that occasionally I come out of to play with a friend, a lover or even my family. I always go back though to inside the box afraid to stay out in the world for too long.

The opposite of fear is faith. The opposite of sorrow is joy. The opposite of anger is gratitude. The opposite of selfishness is giving without expectation. The opposite of crying is laughter. The opposite of being somber is simply smiling with kindness. The opposite of sad is happy.

All of these opposites live within me, but what I am noticing is some have more of a life than others. Graham Greene said that a manuscript "takes perhaps years to write, the author is not the same man at the end of the book as he is at the beginning . . . as though [the manuscript] were something he had begun in childhood and was finishing now in old age." And here I sit not the same person I was on January 9th the date of the first entry of this blog, yet still the same in so many ways.

How long does change take to happen? How long does it take a mind, a heart to give a greater opportunity for living to the lighter positive opposites? How does that psychic change occur? To go back to the beginning I must ask myself "Can it be done?" and "Can I do it?"

The answer to those questions lie in what feelings I am willing to bring to the laptop that are uncomfortable. What am I willing to let go of that I wrap around me like a pall? Am I willing to learn how to expect things will work out? Am I willing to accept with grace when they don't? Am I willing to believe that even I deserve to be happy? Am I willing to feel all those feeling that I have been too afraid to feel?

What would happen if I actually let go and laughed? What voice would boom from the sky and tell me "laughter is not for you." What would happen if just for an hour I stopped thinking how I should be and I just was? What in that hour would I find to write about?

I have talked for days and weeks about writing of an experience and attaching a feeling to it, but there are only a few feelings I recognizably have when I am alone. If I had to answer if I was happy alone I wouldn’t have an answer. If I had to answer if I had felt joy alone I wouldn’t have answer. Have I ever laughed alone? Do I smile when no one else can see me?

All of these questions I can’t answer, but when I am with someone really with someone in such a way I don’t think of how I should be I do have an answer. The answer is yes I feel happy, I know what joy feels like, I laugh and I can feel myself smile.

Can I write the feelings of a positive experience or is all I have in me the negative to write. I woke up to these thoughts from out of Africa and I have been haunted all day by self-doubt and fear that the negative feelings are all I have to write about.

I am a visual learner who needs to have an action in order to change the way my mind thinks and works. I am a believer in flash cards with inspirational saying, meditation books that repeat the same message every day with a different set of words. I am a believer in writing exercises and getting lost and trying to find your way back home.

If I extend my commitment to write daily into exercises of writing the opposites then I need to recall an experience I can write daily to attach my opposite feelings to. A blogging exercise of little vignettes something I truly can enjoy.

Exercise #1:

It was his hands that won her heart in the beginning. His hands were not the imagined thick strong type you would think belonged to a full-fledged communist. His hands were clean and pale; the kind of hands that looked like they had come out of warm water. His hands suited him perfectly.

It was her first meeting. She dressed looking at herself in the mirror thinking there was nothing new about her to see. Her blue-green eyes were still blue-green; her pale skin was still pale; her thin lips still thin and her blonde scraggly hair still blonde and scraggly. She refocused on applying her lipstick and let her mind wonder why she was making all the extra effort to look perfectly desirable.

She was going to a meeting of the minds, where ideas and philosophies would be noticed over the average good looks of a want-to-be so she can belong communist. But since he first spoke to her at the cafeteria she had felt a desire to try harder, push a bit farther, she found a willingness within her to take the next step forward. Tonight at the meeting he would be there sitting off to the side up front in the first chair of vertical rows in a hall crammed with people standing horizontally.

Tonight she would sit closer to him. Maybe just five rows back or maybe three. No tonight she was going to sit next to him. She had planned the evening over and over in her mind. There he would be when she walked in the hall. He would feel her presence long before he saw her. He would change the direction of his walk circling back not knowing why, but just knowing he had to. Then when she couldn’t bear to watch him unknowingly search for her any longer she would step up beside him. They would smile at each other, but she would look away first. She would blush, be embarrassed by her attraction and she would be unable to lift her chin up to look at him he was so attractive to her.

He would speak to her softly, putting his arm around her waist gently guiding her forward to a seat beside him in his vertical row. She would look at the horizontal world standing around them and she would feel his passions and his convictions. She would believe this time it will be different. This time she has found the one.

The lipstick dropped out of her hand and a little gasp brought her back to the mirror and her unchanged reflection. When would it happen? When would she be different? How many meeting in halls filled with smoke and noise and cups of cold coffee? How many counted and folded brochures before she would be different?

He told her the world could change with her help that she would change if she let herself believe and act on what she believed. She recapped her lipstick, brushed her hair one last time, checked her pantyhose for runs and walked out of her tiny flat throwing her coat over her arm. Tonight would change her. She promised herself she wouldn’t come back to these four walls feeling like she was still waiting for something to happen to her. It had to be tonight. She just couldn’t come back.   

Depth of my commitment......

Donald B. Ardell wrote, "Relationships are only as alive as the people engaging in them." The most important relationship I have today is with me. What I give to myself I get back. The same is true for my writing what I put into my writing I get back.

If I don't write a single word today then I get nothing back. If I write even just a few words what I get back are all the intangible feelings that have nothing to do with selling or publishing or even other people reading. The intangibles I get back are feelings of satisfaction, self-trust, self-belief and I learn how to prop myself up instead of looking and searching for others to prop me up.

When I am developing a relationship with me I also gain fellowship with my writing peers. I am reaching out and trying to be a part of because to be connected is to not be alone. Alone I am my own worst enemy. With my fellow writers I begin to be my own best friend.

Every experience I have is measured in terms of what I give. I use to be a writer who never honored a commitment, never finished a project. I am not that person today. I am not the person who lives in the extremes. Today my life is about writing and living in the grey. I write no matter how I feel. I know I must write something every day to become the writer I want to be. The most important thing I do today is honor my commitments once I have made them.

I have commitments I never utter aloud and then I have commitments I make to my family, my friends and a partner, but no commitment is as important as the unspoken one I made to myself to write every day. The depth of my commitment to write daily has helped me honor my commitments to others. I am involved therefore I am.

When I hold back and I live in the fear of I can't, I won't, it hurts too much, then I am living a writing life of reserved involvement that will give me only limited rewards. If I commit my whole heart to writing daily then I get the rewards that are infinite and beyond anything I can imagine

I am how I feel. If I feel afraid I write a story about a fearful experience and attach my feelings. If I am sad I write of an experience that touches my heart and makes me sad and again I attach my feelings. If a day comes along that I am filled with joy then I write of an experience that is joyful. I attach my feelings to the experience so my readers can identify with how I feel not the dirty details of my experience.

Every story I write is a reflection of the relationship I have with myself. I am a partner in my own relationship: I am involved, I reach out, I follow, I lead, I forgive, I live. My relationship with self is only going to be as rewarding and fruitful as the effort and work I put into being the best writer I can be.

Every story I write I get out of it only what I put into it. Every day I have a new chance, another opportunity to contribute more to my writing life then I did the day before. If I am still looking on the outside for the relationship that is right there waiting for me on the inside then I will miss the opportunity today to be the writer I want to and can be.

Through my commitment to write daily and my willingness to honor my commitment I am developing a sense of a writing self. I am feeling stronger with each click to publish. I am gradually claiming authority over my writing self. The hole in the center of my writing life is disappearing. I am becoming a full partner in writing this writer’s life……..

Feeling the experience......

"It is never too late to be what you might have been" according to George Eliot, but how many times have I let the thought that it is too late keep me from writing. The mysteries that remain in the world pale in comparison to the mysteries that live in my mind. Each day I wake up there are new possibilities to explore, there are new truths to uncover and there is more knowledge to acquire. The discoveries within me are endless, yet I still look outward for experiences to feel and write.

With each new experience I have I develop a deeper connection with self. I nurture me a little more so I can write of the feelings of the experience within me a little deeper. It is feelings that readers identify with more so than the experience. The more I reveal of what I feel the more I open myself up to a deeper experience with my readers.

As a writer I don't know what I am going to write about until I feel the feelings of the experience I am writing. Every story begins with a feeling felt during an experience that marked my life, my mind and created conflict to some degree in my surroundings. The feeling could be empathy for another's loss, excitement for a loved one's success or confusion when my world crumbles and I don't understand why.

Once I know the feeling I am going to write I write the story of the experience. I close my mind to all things other than the feelings attached to the experience. The story begins with a closed mind completely focused and ends with a variety of varied possibilities. As I write the story my mind becomes less closed and I become more willing to explore.

My birthright is to experience as much as possible. My creative right is to feel my experiences as much as possible. My writing right is to share those feelings and experiences as much as possible. If I filter my feelings and my experiences I am not living my birth right, my creative right or my writing right. If I write the truth of my experience and my feelings of the experience then I am free to write. If I am holding back, filtering, not telling the whole truth I am not free I am static in a story that needs fluidity.

I can invite all the people I know to read my story. I can welcome them all. All the people I invite though can only enter through the emotional door I open. If I am static then the door to my feelings remains closed and all who are welcomed keep running into walls. They are blocked from identifying with my feelings and experiences. If I am fluid letting the feelings of the experience run free in my story then everyone I welcome walks through the door crying, laughing, feeling their own feelings about my experience.

On the days when it seems too hard to write, when we are too busy we may look at the day as a throwaway day. Playing the mind game of believing I have days I can afford to throwaway saps my energy to write. I become a victim of my own thinking, my negative thoughts and I stop paying attention to what is important--writing.

It is not important what I write all that is important is that I do write. Even if I write just my senses, what the room sounds life, smells like, looks like, what the air tastes like, what the laptop feels like I am writing. I can be mindful of the feelings I am experiencing in the experience of what my senses are doing.

I cannot afford to throwaway any more days like I have more than I need. I must stop seeing my writing life as disposable. Each day I am able to write is a gift that I must notice and appreciate. The day is important enough to stand alone, all by itself; it is noteworthy and valuable all on its own without me in it. No writing day is a throwaway day; I must stop believing I have days to throwaway………..

Developing loving behavior.......

Edith Sitwell wrote, "When we think of cruelty, we must try to remember the stupidity, the envy, the frustration from which it has arisen." I am my own worst enemy. I am a defeatist at heart. My greatest battle is do I or don’t I let others see my behaviors are a reflection of my inner state of mind and my emotional well-being.

When I am writing a character I am reflecting how I feel about myself in the development of that character. How I am treating myself and the people in my life that day is an indicator of how I feel during my writing of another person. In order to keep my emotions in check I must become disciplined in the belief that I have value simply because I exist.

I must pass this belief on to my characters or I will never finish bringing them to life. Believing my life has purpose is to believe I have something to contribute as a writer. In order to finish developing a character I must believe they have something to contribute to the story. It is in my ability to love myself and love my characters that I am able to believe we both have a purpose. My purpose is to write a place for my character to be and my character’s purpose is to become someone I can relate to in the story.

How does all that self-love and belief in purpose manifest itself to help me write? I can't remember the last time I didn't want to feel responsible for someone or something. Who I am is a caretaker. I am in a perpetual search for someone to help. I people watch. I have interactions where others would miss the opportunity. I pay attention to the details of the day. In every experience I have as I go about my day I am writing. It is the caretaker in me that allows me to take such care of the characters I develop.

For years I self-destructed because it was so automatic to think of others without a thought given for myself. In those years I never wrote a word. I stopped believing I would ever write a single sentence. But as I have learned how to accept the person I really am I have been able to turn what once held me back into something that pushes me forward.

The ultimate achievement in my day is if I lived in moderation. Anything in extremes is not real it cannot last. Everything in moderation has the time to become real and be nurtured into something that will last.

I have finally found the grey area in this writer's life. I don't have to be all this or all that. I can exist very nicely somewhere in the middle where it is grey. In the grey is where I let go of my defeatist attitudes. I am able to just be me. Sometimes I fail. Sometimes I succeed. Neither one owns me anymore. In the grey area I am becoming the writer I always knew I could be.  

I am a composite of all that makes me who I am. The more I am able to accept myself the easier it is to walk up to the laptop, have a seat and write. Mahatma Gandhi said that on those days when life doesn't go my way I must believe my failures are blessings with just as much importance as my successes.

I can look back on those years of not writing as years I failed. I can choose to beat myself with regrets, self-doubt and defeatism. I can always remain stuck in what has become comfortable which is failure as determined by my own set of high standards.

Failure is just another word for fear and guilt. I can choose to be comfortable in my failure or I can choose to experience the life I was meant to have. I can get up from the laptop, go back to bed and avoid writing or I can stay put and feel what uncomfortable feels like until I learn that this new feeling one day will also become comfortable.

When I have an attitude of defeatism I am not accepting parts of who I am. With my attitude of failure I sit at the laptop and stare out the window oblivious to life going on around me. I am so deep inside my own negative thoughts what I am looking at isn’t even registering. The voices in my head are so loud I can’t hear my own inner voice.

Only I can choose to live the writing life I was meant to live. Only I can change my attitude of failure into willingness to risk. I am not the only one who has to live with the choice I make to write or not write today. Those around me also pay the price for my decision. When I am living in the extreme of all writing or no writing I’m not living contently in the grey.

I am responsible. I am the one. I am where everything stops. I am in control of only my choices today……………..


  

Standards make it impossible to achieve.......

I have come to understand that in order to unlock the door and enter into the world I want to live in I must accept the person I am. If I focus too much on becoming the person I want to be or have been then I miss the opportunity to enjoy the person I am right now in the moment.

Part of putting life in front of my writing was because I set my standards for the perfect word choice, the perfect sentence and ultimately the perfect story too high. I could never make the decision to commit to writing daily because my standards were too high for me to achieve.

I wanted every word to be perfectly exact and since I was never content with the words I came up with I chose not to write any words at all. When I was making the decision daily to not write I didn't realize the full extent of the consequences. I couldn't understand because no one can understand the ramifications of a decision until the dust has settled, we gain perspective and we reflect in hindsight whether or not our choices were the right ones.

All any writer can do is make a decision in the moment whether or not to write today. The consequences of a decision to not write are only felt in hindsight.

In my head I would always say tomorrow I will write. I never realized that tomorrow never comes and that by living in tomorrow I was missing the opportunity I was granted today to write. If in our life we worry and fret about what the future will bring then we lose all opportunity of living today.

My biggest fear in life has always been to be lying on my death bed with regret. If I don’t change the course of my writing life I will have regret that I missed the daily opportunity to express myself in writing. The regret isn't that I didn't get published or that no one reads what I wrote. The regret is that I didn't value me enough to live in the moment and seize the opportunity to write each day of my life.

What has changed in me is that I have come to accept that I am not perfect and the standards I set for my "perfect" writing are unrealistic. I will not always have the perfect word, be able to formulate the perfect sentence or create the perfect story. What I can do perfectly though is write something, anything, every day. If all I accomplish today is to write in this blog then I have been successful today.

Something else I have changed in me is that I no longer isolate myself from others like me. I am developing a social network of fellow writers who struggle with the same issues I do in terms of commitment to self. In knowing and feeling that I am not alone in my struggle the burden lessens within me. I need fellowship in order to not set standards for myself that are unrealistic.

When I am living in fear I am not being true to myself. When I am living in fear of writing I feel a knot in my stomach, I feel disconnected from the people around me. But when I share my fears with my fellow writers I lessen my pain and the ability to write takes me to a new and refreshing perspective of who I am today in this very moment. I can share my struggles with my fellows and even share my solutions, but what is most important is that I listen and accept the solution my peers have stumbled upon to help them handle similar struggles.

I must come to accept that to be the person I really want to be is to accept the person I really am. I am a writer who on some days is afraid to feel her writing and so I have chosen on many days not to write because I was afraid to not meet my self-imposed high standards. Instead of acknowledging I was afraid by telling another writer I diverted my fear and focused on other things in life like an education, a career, raising a family, buying that house or boat or car. All these diversions kept me away from accepting who and what I am, a writer too afraid of failure to write.

I cannot change the decisions I made all I can do is make different ones today. I must always do my best to make my decisions in the moment wisely because the results will always have consequences once the dust settles. For this writer the consequence was waiting until mid-life to put me first and to become the person, the writer I always wanted to be.

It doesn't matter how you get to putting yourself first and making the daily commitment to write all that matters is you make the decision. When I am struggling and looking hard to find the reason why I am not wanting to write the answer I discover is staring me in the face, all I had to do was stop looking for it. The answer is always that there is something I don’t want to feel.

Aristotle wrote, "Happiness is the meaning and the purpose of life, the whole aim and end of human existence." I am the one who takes the happiness out of my life. I am the one who sets the standards so high I don't have to think about accomplishing anything. I already know I can't so I don't even try. I divert my attention to other things in life.

In fellowship with other writers I find happiness and acceptance. I find acceptance of my own imperfections and struggles because in order to be a writer amongst writers I must accept my peer’s imperfections and struggles. When I am not happy with myself I look for happiness in other people, places and things. When I choose not to write I search for a diversion that allows me to forget I am not happy with myself. Keeping happiness out of my life is a choice I make on a daily basis.

When I am writing on a daily basis I am happy with myself. The happiness of today spills over and I catch it again the next day if I honor my same commitment to write. In hindsight all those days in my life of not writing are just lessons of what not to do and they are experiences I can share so that another writer's burden may be lessened by feeling that they are not alone....we are alike.

As my self-imposed burden of too high a standard eases with every day I choose to write my heart finds its own happiness. I search less and less for happiness on the outside and I am learning to enjoy my own happiness I create by being the person I really want to be. I really want to be a writer who writes.

I am only left to struggle alone if I chose to remain alone.........

When I am calm I am free.......

Today was a very unique day. Today I was able to communicate with others like my struggling self and talk about the angst of not being able to write. It was comforting to know that I am not alone and that I have a solution to my own block when it suddenly appears out of nowhere. I know this because I was able to share what I do when I can't write.

Since the beginning of the year all I have been able to write is this blog. My ability to write for my living has slowed to nearly nothing. Over the past weeks I have written about feelings, voices in my head, conflicts that don't have satisfactory resolutions and as I wrote all these blogs I have been struggling to earn my living writing. When we beat ourselves up because we wilt at the mere thought of sitting at the laptop or pulling out the old manuscript we are playing the tapes of all those times when we convinced ourselves that we just couldn't do it.

As a writer I struggle not to seek approval from others. I struggle to write just for me regardless of who reads me. Today I networked with other writers who struggle like I do with unfinished manuscripts in the drawer, the inability to listen to that inner voice and to believe that I can honor the commitment I made to myself to write on a daily basis.

M. Scott Peck, M.D. wrote, "Although the act of nurturing another's spiritual growth has the effect of nurturing one's own, a major characteristic of genuine love is that the distinction between oneself and the other is always maintained and preserved." As writers we must learn how to nurture our spirit with the same compassion we nurture the spirit of our characters. I have fallen in love with some of the characters I write because I am able to make the distinction of where I end and they begin. I fall in love with who they are and who they are becoming not who I think they should be or wish they were.

I am successful in writing characters and developing a nurturing relationship with them because I let them roam freely on my laptop screen. I don't control where they go or who they are. I let them become the people they are meant to be. In my daily commitment to write I am encouraging my characters to develop into full well-rounded people. The relationship I develop with my characters is interdependent. We need each other's presence so that we may become the people we are meant to be.

As the writer I am a separate individual from my characters even though they are a reflection of my life. I must learn how to overcome my struggles to write as my characters learn how to overcome their struggles. We are interdependent finding the solution to our struggles alone while being dependent on each other for the solution.

As I keep my commitment to write daily I am becoming more secure and I am recognizing my accomplishments more and more. The first accomplishment is that I am writing at this moment. The second is I didn't cave to the self-battering that stops me from writing; the block to me is a period of self-battering. The block is a time when someone or something around me has triggered a feeling that didn't even register in my conscious mind, but it is there eating at me from the inside out preventing me from writing. Until I discover what that feeling is, accept it and then move through the feeling with the daily grind of writing I will not be free to write.  

The time spent alone writing is more difficult than the actual task of writing. There are times when my mind is a dangerous place to be and the last place I should be is alone.  If everyone could spend time alone there would be more writers, but not everyone can. When I am living in unison with my surroundings I am able to write without fear, angst or self-doubt.

My job as a writer is to remain calm in the eye of the storm around me. When I am calm I am free to relive an experience and write how the experience feels. Did you hear me? When I am calm I can write..............

Control the direction of my thoughts.......

Virginia Woolf wrote, "Do not dream of influencing other people....Think of things in themselves." Whenever I sit down to write thinking I can control the direction of my thoughts I am doomed to failure before I even start. The plan I have for someone else as in teaching a lesson, changing their perception or getting them to see my point of view takes the feeling out of my writing and leaves all my words flat and cerebral.

The passion I feel and I give to my characters comes from my trusting in the outcome being whatever it is supposed to be. Any relationship I have with a character thinking I know the outcome before the outcome happens is built on expectation rather than exploration. When I have an expectation I block myself from feeling which means I block my character from feeling. When I am struggling and disappointed in my writing the willingness to let go and let my writing go wherever it wants to take me disappears.

In order for me to feel the freedom that writing brings me I must be free in all areas of my life. This is not to say that life will ever be perfect. What I have learned about myself is that I have the discipline to sit still at the laptop for hours, but if my mind is not free I can't quiet the noise in my head enough to hear just one voice....my inner voice.

Any effort I make to keep my commitment to write daily must always be on my own behalf. I am the only one who truly influences my life. I have choices at every turn. I can be a positive influence on my writing self or a negative one. Whatever influence I choose to have over my writing self is what is reflected in my writing of my characters and story for that day.

I struggle staying in the confines of an outline in a first draft. I write stream of consciousness and fill pages and pages and pages that I sort through to make something worth editing. I let the feelings in me create beginnings and ending that eventually formulate a manuscript that is palatable. It is amazing when I read over my stream of consciousness writing what I learn about myself. My characters become wiser as I write out their lives that they lead me through. I have yet to direct a character into a solution they tell me how they want to resolve their conflict and I support their choices by writing a solution they have decided they can live with. Situations arise and solutions are found and conflict is resolved only to crop up in another place in another character.

What are the "things in themselves" Virginia Woolf writes about? The “things” in my life are my work, what I do for fun, my relationships, my growth as a writer and as a person. Through my writing if I choose to look for it I discover where I haven't been giving my best effort to "things in themselves."  Whatever the genre I write there is a self-discovery factor in the finished product.

With each manuscript I finish I become more and more the writer I want to be. The writer I want to be is disciplined, prolific and free to let the story take me wherever I need to go. I say “wherever I need to go” because when I sit down to write all I have are feelings and a small sense of some sort of direction. In hindsight I recognize that I need to go somewhere in my stories. I learn a lesson about life in every story I write. The best novels are those that have chapters that stand alone as stories............

Writing to the very end......

How many potential writers quit before their prayers of being published get answered? Writing is living a life of endurance. It takes a certain personality to go and sit at the laptop every day and write out the world that lives in your mind.

Sometimes sitting at the laptop I wonder if I can endure to the very end. I wonder if it is too late in my life to begin again. But what if I give up? What if the moment I have been craving is just around the corner and I just have to do a little more work to attain my dream.

I don't know the names of the writers who couldn't endure to the end. I only know the writers who did. And there are the Sylvia Plath's and the Anne Sexton's, the Hart Crane's, the Virginia Woolf's and the Earnest Hemingway's who endured for as long as they could, but was it really to the end?

What is it that causes a writer to doubt? What is it that causes anyone to doubt themselves? Where does all the fear come from when we are given the opportunity to succeed…..to have everything handed to us we’ve prayed years for? Why does fear consume us and take away our self-belief?

How many times has how I look to someone else prevented me from being the writer I know I can be? As I explore the real me in this blog I find that the eyes of other's aren't my mirrors as much anymore. Somewhere along the way I am finding courage with each click to publish. I can sit down and feel my own reflection looking back at me. My eyes closed and the house quiet I see myself less fragmented than I use to. And that is because one person believed in me when I couldn’t, wouldn’t and didn’t.

I can never know for sure what other's think or feel about and for me; just when I think I am safe in knowing they change and I fall down again thinking I am alone. I must always esteem myself and not worry what others are thinking of me. I must always write out the fragmentations in my mind so that from the pieces I can see my own reflection separated from everyone even the one person who believed in me when I didn’t.

As a writer I want to be loved, admired, followed and respected, but on this journey I am the only constant. Only I can be consumed in developing myself as a person and a writer. The journey is mine and only my concern. When is the last time someone asked me if I wrote today? It was 41 days ago and it was the muse, that one person who believed in me when I didn’t, couldn’t and wouldn’t.

Today I am forced to look within and worry about how I perceive myself as a writer. I must focus on pleasing myself and no one else. If writing were easy everybody would do it, but writing isn’t. Writing is a lot of introspection and not everyone is able to dig within themselves to find an experience that readers can identify with and then write out the feelings of that experience.

Charlotte Vale-Allen author of Daddy’s Girl taught me that to write and experience with feeling was the only way to get a reader to identify with me as more than a writer. The goal for this writer is to help the reader identify with me as a person through my writing. Overwhelming feelings are the reason why some writers never start, why some never finish and why many can’t endure. Those writers, who do start, finish and endure the overwhelming feelings of the experience their writing about have no regrets. They are writers who have lived their lives true to who they are to the very end.

I have a choice today to feel and endure or not to feel and parish…………..  

Writing with tolerance......

The more I stick to my commitment to write on a daily basis the more tolerant I become of myself and the feelings I have of not wanting to write. When I think about writing I think of quietness, solitude, jumbled voices and the clicking of keys on my laptop. I try not to think of the words that may or not come to mind.

In order to tolerate myself and my thoughts I must learn what my limitations are. By learning my limitations I can recognize when I need to go the extra mile to turn a limitation into strength. I have a friend who says “that eventually my defects become my assets.”

I have found that as a writer it is easier to accept other people's limitations more so than my own. In order to tolerate myself I must acknowledge first that I have limitations and second that if I am willing I can learn how to overcome them.

For this writer the first thing that must always change is the way in which I think about a situation. It is easy for my thinking to become distorted because I spend so much time alone as a writer. It is only through talking with other people that I am able to see a situation for what it is. By talking to people it also allows me to see a person for who they are, what they are capable of and what they are not. From this knowledge of self and of others I learn tolerance.

When my thinking is distorted my behavior becomes inconsistent. The first inconsistency is that I don't want to write today. Since writing for the day is based on my feelings at the moment I sit down at the laptop my success is hinged to the accuracy of my self-perceptions and my perceptions of others. If I am unable to accurately look at my limitations then how can I trust my perceptions of other people’s limitations?

Writing is not writing what other people think, feel or do. Writing is about writing what I think, feel and do or wish I had done. When I was saying I was a writer and not writing I was justifying my intolerance of myself. As I develop this writing habit I cannot afford to justify my own intolerance. I must come to accept that the time I lost not writing wasn’t wasted. The time I spent focusing on other people's success rather than my own has not been a waste of my life. In actuality it has given me something to write about in this blog.

The point of this blog is to create a fellowship of like-minded writers who struggle to be dedicated to the habit of writing on a daily basis. Writing is a lonely job and far too often people don't understand and respect the need for quiet time in order to create.

The more I sit down to write and begin typing the better I feel about myself. My self-worth as a writer is linked more to my discipline to keep my commitment to write than the amount of pages I actually do write. Each time I sit down at the laptop I renew my commitment to write every day.

Abraham Maslow wrote, "If the only tool you have is a hammer, you tend to see every problem as a nail." I can choose what attitude I am going to have today. I can have a negative attitude where I hammer every situation until it breaks into a thousand pieces. Or I can tolerate my limitations and turn them into assets that bring me to a state of mind where I can actually sit still and write for a few hours.

The meaning of tolerance is the ability to let a person have their own experience. How hard is that for a writer who creates experiences for others on a daily basis? As I write a character, a scene, a setting or a plot I am writing the experience of the reader and the character alike. I must always remember to not have a "now or never" attitude. I must be open to where the character leads me in my own story.

As a writer I must always think in terms of how I can make the text richer and more varied so I can develop a hook for the reader. When I write of a situation as if it were a nail and I the hammer then my characters are flat and so is my story.

Writing is about giving up control of the outcome. As I write a character I am only a sounding board in which the character uses to self-create or self-destruct. I must accept whatever path my character chooses to take. Even in writing a story I only struggle when I hold too tightly onto what I believe is the ending. When I let go and let the story find its own way then the story seems to be grand and beautifully designed.

The writers I most admire are those who in their personal lives were able to let go of what they thought the outcome of their life should be. I am at my best as a writer and a person when I am tolerant of myself and others. I am at my best as a writer and a person when I let the outcome of every situation be whatever it is going to be..........

Writing the concerns......

Karen Horney said, "...concern should drive us into action and not into depression." As I think that I might not be able to write today I feel this wave of depression begin to wash over me. It is what I do at that moment that dictates my attitude for the day. I have the choice to let myself become depressed and frozen in my fear that I have nothing to say or I can physically get up from my desk and do something that will stimulate me into writing.

I am a true believer that everything in life is all about the action and not the words. If I say “I love you” I must show you I love you. If I say “I'm sorry” I must not repeat the action that hurt you. Each statement I make I must back up with an action. I apply the same belief to my commitment to write every day. For years I said I was a writer and I was going to start tomorrow to write every day; the problem was that tomorrow would come and I would say not today tomorrow. I will begin writing tomorrow.

If I am concerned that I have nothing to say today in my writing then it is even more important for me to do the action of writing. On those days when I am at my lowest I must be even more disciplined to write. Every concern I have about my writing must be expressed through an action of doing. It is only through doing that I regain control over the feelings I am having.

I need to be my own best friend, my own muse, and learn how to give myself emotional support when the tough days come. And tough days do come when sitting at the laptop is the last thing I want to do. My proper response to not wanting to write must always be to write more. The worst thing I can do when I don't feel like writing is to not write. By being non-responsive to my desire not to write today I am allowing inaction to enhance my feelings of not wanting to write.

It is when I don't respond immediately to my feelings of not wanting to write that I allow idle preoccupation to enter my mind and prevent me from keeping my commitment to write daily. Immediate inaction changes the course of events in my day and changes how I feel about myself as a writer.

On January 9, 2011 I made a commitment to myself to write in this blog and click publish every day for a year. As I have struggled on some days to keep this commitment to myself I have learned that action reflects appropriately the need in me to try harder, focus more, and settle in to being uncomfortable. Doing the right thing for me no matter how it feels brings about feelings that for decades I have chosen to ignore by the action of not writing a single word.

Honoring my commitment to myself to write daily is the only appropriate response when I don't feel good enough to write. My actions must always be appropriate in regards to keeping my daily writing commitment. My actions must allow me to write through what I am feeling or not feeling on any given day.......

Committing to write.....

Commitment is an understanding with yourself that you are going to do the right thing no matter how it feels. It is uncomfortable doing the right thing all the time. Sometimes even though we know that avoiding writing will hurt us in the long run we choose to not writing because it doesn't feel good to sit at the laptop feeling like you have nothing to say.

Understanding the magnitude of making a commitment to yourself is as important as honoring the commitment to self. If I am to honor my commitments I must understand why I make them. The reason why I make a commitment is that I have committed to changing something in my life. Even a commitment to another person requires a change in my life.

Aristotle said “We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence then, is not an act, but a habit.” Committing to writing changes my daily life. Such a commitment changes how I feel about myself. For some reason after decades of not being able to commit to writing every day I am now able to. What changed in my life that made me able to commit to writing? I became able to make a decision.

There comes a time in every writer's life that they either create and commit to a program of writing or they don't. Reality has to be faced that you are a writer who writes or a want-to-be writer who talks about writing. What is amazing about this turning point in a writer's life is that the pain of not producing and the inability to commit to writing leaves. There is a voice that comes from within that just says "do it" and you do. But the decision to develop a writing habit has to be made first.

Tonight a new person in my life didn't understand that I couldn't go to bed without writing something in this blog. No matter how hard I tried to explain it she didn't get why I didn't just go to bed and write in the morning. I finally realized that it wasn't important for her to understand. All that was important was that I understood.

If I commit to being disciplined then I must be disciplined. If I commit to a program of writing then I must honor that commitment to write. All my actions either enhance my writing experience or detract from it. There is no writing with convenience because when I write when it is convenient the time never comes to write.

If I make the decision to stop talking about wanting to be a writer and I start writing then I stop hiding behind my self-doubt and fear. Giving all the credit and putting all the responsibility on another person for my writing is a form of hiding behind my self-doubt and fear.

In order for me to live a life as a fulfilled writer I must make the effort to honor the commitment I made with myself. A commitment requires discipline, effort and I must put the big girl pants on and become responsible for my own life.

No one gets the credit when I write; therefore, no one should get the blame when I don't.......