Smoked trout, arugula, strawberry, avocado salad

03 Sunday May 2015

Posted by in Food

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This salad is basically the perfect salad. I’ve been addicted to it for weeks. Today I experimented with spinach instead of arugula and nope, it just didn’t work as well.

So, to a base of arugula, add four sliced strawberries, chunks of half an avocado, approximately 2/3 of a Trader Joe’s smoked trout, and drizzle with balsamic vinegar. So good. The strawberries taste best with some arugula — bitter and tangy in the same mouthful. And the trout and avocado also taste best together — salty and creamy, plus the different textures.

I appear to have never taken a picture of it, which is okay, since my photos are pretty terrible, and I find it tough to believe that I will ever forget this recipe… but here it is, saved for posterity anyway.

Grilled Pork Chops with Garlic-based Rub

01 Friday May 2015

Posted by in Randomness

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2015-04-17 16.46.17

CostCo sells multi-packs of pork chops and, as meat goes, they’re cheap. It works out to something like $1 per fat pork chop. Since eating AIP starts adding up, I decided I’d give them a try, even though I’ve never really cared for pork chops.

OMG, I am now in love with pork chops. Seriously, I’ve eaten five in the past two weeks or so, because they are so, so, so good. At least when cooked this way…

Make a rub of a couple cloves of pressed garlic, zest from a lime or lemon, a couple teaspoons of a chopped up herb (I’ve tried rosemary and mint, both are good, cilantro is next on my list to try) and a couple teaspoons of kosher salt. These measurements obviously are not precise, but it depends on how many chops you’re making. It’s better to have extra than not enough, IMO.

Rub the mixture all over your pork chop (preferably thick-cut) and let sit for at least an hour and up to four. Longer might be fine, too, but I haven’t tried it.

Grill on a pre-heated grill as appropriate for your cut of chop. The ones from CostCo are fat — they need about seven minutes per side. Don’t overcook them, though. Pork doesn’t need to be solid white, the way people always cooked it in the 70s. . Trichinosis is a) extremely rare since Congress passed a law in 1980 not allowing pigs to be fed garbage and b) killed at a temp of 137 F. You can cook your pork to 145, which would seem close to rare, and it should be safe.

Add some olive oil and lemon or lime juice to the dish where you made the rub and mix thoroughly. Voila, salad dressing. (You could also use vinegar.) Pour the salad dressing over a salad of your choice–mine was arugula and avocado the first time and it was delicious.

Slice the pork chop and serve over the salad. So good! That was the first time I stopped eating three bites into a meal and went off to find my camera, because I knew I wanted to save this recipe/idea. It was delicious. The two times I’ve made it since, I’ve cooked two pork chops and turned the second one into cold salads for the next day. Two pork chops can be three meals for me, so I’m getting my protein for less than $1/meal, plus getting my leafy greens. Yum. Plus, it’s easy to mix it up by changing the herbs and the citrus — maybe someday I’ll try orange zest and basil, or grapefruit zest and mint. Oh, that sounds so good. Maybe that someday will be this weekend.

Writing Fairy Tales

01 Friday May 2015

Posted by in Writing

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I’ve been thinking a lot about fairy tales recently. Sometime during the writing of A Gift of Time, I realized that what I was writing was a fairy tale. A modern one. A weird one. Not at all traditional. But a fairy tale nonetheless. It gave me, at the time, the clarity about the ending that I needed to keep going and it’s been a thought in the back of my head ever since.

My latest story–not yet in its final version–is also a fairy tale. But I’m not sure why I believe that. I suppose it would be easy to argue that almost all romance novels are fairy tales — the princess gets her prince and they live happily ever after, right? But that doesn’t feel right to me. A certain type of story is a fairy tale. Not all romances. Maybe a fairy tale requires magic? Enchantment?

The question lead me to tvtropes.org, which was awesome as always. I so love that site. And I can definitely see how I’ve used some of the fairy tale tropes in my work. (Back from the Dead, anyone?) It also amused me enormously to see how many of them I’ve already used in A Gift of Grace, which is only about 25% done. And it gave me some fun ideas for new stories–which, quite honestly, I did not need. I can’t keep up with the ideas I have! But I will be adding a couple of these to my story notes file, because they would be fun, fun, fun.

Moving on, though — here’s the thing about fairy tales. Yes, at the end, the princess gets her prince. But she gets a lot more than that, too. The princess — think Cinderella, the Little Mermaid, Sleeping Beauty — gets to be queen. She gets the gorgeous dress, she gets the big castle, she gets power. On the surface, yes, a lot of fairy tales (not all of them) are stories about a girl in need of a boy to rescue her. But when she’s rescued, it’s not into a life of boredom or drudgery. It’s a rescue into a world of magic and beauty and love. Cinderella doesn’t wind up working 9-7 and coming home to piles of laundry and dirty dishes.

But fairy tales also have their dark undercurrents. In the originals, of course, they were sometimes incredibly grim and graphically violent. But even in the less dark versions, there is a threat of some sort — the evil witch, the wicked stepmother. And that threat carries with it a sense of impending doom, of … well, creepiness, for lack of a better word. Plenty of romances have some threat in them that creates conflict but doesn’t inspire anxiety. Those don’t feel like fairy tales to me.

I’m still thinking about this, obviously. But for me, it’s a good framework for thinking about what I want to accomplish in a story. Is it magic? Does the princess win ALL the things? Does the threat cause real unease?

Back when I decided to indie publish, my goal was to write a million words that I was willing to share with other people and then decide if I wanted to be a writer. If I was good enough to be a writer, really. I’ve probably got another 300,000 to go (and I might be being generous to myself by counting words that I never really did share with that number). Anyway, I can’t objectively judge my writing, of course, but I’m definitely noticing that I’m thinking about it differently again.

For a while — maybe 400K into my goal — I was obsessed with mechanics. Avoiding repetitions, tightening, stronger verbs, better mannerisms. Now, though, I seem to be goal focused. A beta reader suggested I delete a paragraph and I ruled out the suggestion immediately. When I took a step back, I realized it was because I know exactly why that paragraph is there. I know what my goal is with it, how I’m using it to build character, why it’s important in the overall story, what it does. Now maybe it’s not doing it successfully, which is why the reader might not see its purpose, but I’ve gone from writing entirely on intuition to … well, writing on intuition, but still being able to break it down afterwards in a different way.

Which brings me back to fairy tales. Tomorrow (or perhaps tonight) I will start working on A Gift of Grace again, and I’m going to be thinking about fairy tales every step of the way. Instead of discovering at the end that I’m writing a fairy tale, I’m going to plan it as a fairy tale. I think it’s going to be fun. Fun to write and, I hope, someday fun to read.

Writing Strategies

27 Monday Apr 2015

Posted by in Personal, Randomness, Short Stories

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Back in March, I decided I needed a new writing strategy. The one I was using was not working. I was writing a lot of words, but hardly any of them were on the stories I was trying to write. So I decided that I would write nothing else — no blogging, no journaling, no long emails to friends — until I finished writing the short story I was working on. I figured ten days.

Ten days went by. I was still writing. I thought maybe another four days. Four days went by. I was still writing. And on it went. (I cheated on the long emails to friends — that one was just impossible to continue not writing.)

Last week I finally finished the first draft and for the past week, I’ve wavered over whether my goal was to have a final version before I wrote anything else (it was) or whether I could start blogging again. The final version is not done. But eh, I missed blogging. And more than that, stuff has happened in my life that I don’t want to forget and blogging is my way of saving my memories, plus sometimes it’s how I make my thoughts coherent. So close enough, yes?

I am hard at work on the second draft and I will finish it, and moving forward, I’m aiming for balance. Some blogging, some story, all wrapped around with the realization that beginnings are hard and stories, for me, take a lot of thinking. Sure, a 15,000 word short story should only technically take me two weeks to write, but that’s after I’ve put all the thought into it. I can’t skip that step. And I don’t know why other authors get to speed through that step, but I just can’t. Even with characters I know well, it takes me a long time and a lot of daydreaming to find their authentic actions. Forcing it just means lots of time tangled up in a sense that something is wrong without being able to find the bruises.

Yes, I’m imagining an apple, rotten at the core, that looks all nice and shiny on the outside. I need my apples to be solid and sweet all the way through and it takes me a while. So it goes. Maybe I can get a job at … hmm, for some reason Home Depot was the place that came to mind. Possibly because there’s so much work to do around this house that I don’t know how to do? But maybe a job at Home Deport with writing for a fun hobby is the way to go. Not before Grace is finished, though.

And, in the realm of things I want to be reminded of someday in the future, R called in need of money last week, for a project for one of his classes. We discussed finances, a paper he’d been asked to submit to a conference, and a scholarship he’s applying for, and oh, I had a gigantic lump in my throat by the time I got off the phone. He is so mature, so independent, so self-motivated, and I am SO proud. Ironic that all that came out of a call asking for money, but it did.

During the high school years when I was being the academically incredibly hands-off parent — didn’t ask him if he’d done his homework, didn’t tell him he was going to be late for school, never visited a college with him, encouraged him to believe that it was okay if he didn’t go to college — I did sometimes worry. Academically, I was the opposite of a tiger mom. Well, with the exception of making sure that he was going to a school that valued learning, individuality, and challenge, which is sort of the dirt in which initiative grows, I think. But if he was a tree, I provided the dirt of the educational institution and the sun of love not conditioned on any parameter of “success” and got out of the way and … yay. It worked. It’s hard to parent in opposition to cultural norms. I feel like I spent all 19 years of his life trying to figure out a different way to be a parent than the models I saw around me and … yeah, yay. Yay, him, yay, me. And I hope his initiative gets rewarded.

Ooh, almost time for yoga. So a rambling personal blog post, but later this week, I’m going to be posting recipes on my cooking blog (I made a rub for grilled pork chops that is so good my mouth is watering at the thought of it) and something about writing — specifically adverbs — on the writing blog. But I’m still going to pretend that the professional publishing blog doesn’t exist.

The Power of “I”

24 Tuesday Mar 2015

Posted by in Randomness

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The universe is speaking to me loud and clear today.

I spent the weekend at a fairly intense personal growth workshop. It’s one that I’ve done before but going back was not what I expected it to be. Last night, I couldn’t help feeling disappointed by that. I could see the places where I hadn’t done what I set out to do for myself, where I hadn’t gotten what I wanted, and it was frustrating. Did I want it to be magic? Yep, I did, and it wasn’t.

Even in the midst of my frustration, though, I could see that maybe I’d learned some things, even if they weren’t the ones I was hoping to learn. And I could also be proud of myself for having given it my all. I worked hard. I did exercises that I hate, that scare me, and when I failed, I tried again. Go me. But it still didn’t feel good.

Then I went to yoga. Maybe — well, probably — it was that I was in the right space to hear this message. Maybe the time, the place, the work I’d been doing, all added up to an openness to receive something that I should have heard eons ago. But Lisa, the wonderful yoga instructor, started the class with a few words, as she usually does, and her words today were about “can’t” vs “can.” She spoke about how we think we can’t do something, we’re right, and when we think we can, we’re also right. My inner skeptic grumbled immediately — I’m pretty sure that telling myself I can do twenty push-ups is not going to miraculously make that happen. But she told us that for today, when our thoughts wandered, as they would, she wanted us to bring them back to positive, powerful thoughts and she threw out a few suggestions, “I am amazing, I am powerful, I am strong, I am happy.”

I’ve tried positive self-talk before. (If I hadn’t, I would have had some pretty bad therapists, given how prevalent it is as a cognitive behavioral therapy technique.) But I’ve always used “you” messages, words in the second person POV. Using first person totally changes the impact, the feeling inside. “You are powerful, you are strong” — it sounds like an instruction and it feels like a lie. “I am powerful, I am strong” is a lot more compelling, especially when I’m thinking it while I’m balanced on one hand. It felt great.

In further universe messages, it’s easy to feel invisible when struggling with depression. Easy might not even be the right word — it’s a symptom, like sleeping too much or not enough. Sometimes it’s feeling like glass; fragile, see-through, unnoticed. But I came back from my weekend away to multiple reminders that my existence is noticed, from online friends and real-space friends. (Thanks, Judy!)

I’ve been trying to focus all my writing energy on the stories I’m working on. Instead of writing blog posts and writer’s pages first, they get to come after I’ve finished my fiction word count for the day. Unfortunately, that’s translating into not writing enough words any day. Last night, I was still eking the words of the story out at 10:30 and I came nowhere close to my 1000 word goal. But I persist. Today I’ve been beating myself up over this short story, so I’m taking a break from it right now and finally finishing this blog post that I started writing last week. Yeah, it’s now 10 days since my workshop. Time flies when you’re not writing enough, I guess.

Good stuff happened, though. The weather was nice enough to go swimming twice, making March 16th the first swim day of 2015. I am pretty sure that’s the earliest ever, which is ironic, since the winter has been miserable. Also R came home and we had Peruvian food (delicious!) and Avengers watching. And now… back to short story writing. I keep reminding myself, just tell the story, but alas, I keep worrying about the words. Maybe I should be listening to more music from Frozen.

Depression Checklist

04 Wednesday Mar 2015

Posted by in Randomness

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There are many depression checklists in the world. Most include questions about sleeping, negative thoughts, life events, motivation, joy. My personal depression checklist should start with this: do I care if objects are out of place?

I brought home something last week, can’t remember what, took it out of a black plastic bag, crumpled up the bag and set it on the end table next to the couch. I probably had some reason for that, but I have no idea what it was. And there the bag sat. Every time I walked past it, I thought I should get rid of it. Recycle it, throw it away, fold it up for re-use — lots of options, but definitely something other than let it sit on the end table indefinitely.

Instead, there it sat. One day, then the next, then a couple more, while the weather was gloomy and oppressive, and the demands of the house (paint me! trim my trees! take out the garbage!) felt like a mountain too overwhelming to climb, and mostly, I just wanted to sleep or read or stare into space while pretending to either sleep or read. Well, wanted is the wrong word. I didn’t really want anything at all. Except maybe for the endless churning wheel of time to just let me off for a little break.

Yesterday, I saw the bag sitting on the table and without even thinking much about it, grabbed it and got rid of it. And then I put the headphones that had been hiding underneath it away. While I was at it, I straightened up the shelves, moved some dirty clothes into the right laundry baskets, decided to do a load of laundry, and hey, maybe fold some of the clothes that had been sitting around since last week’s load of laundry. And then, finally, I realized — I feel okay again. After really not feeling okay for several days.

I don’t know why I dropped into the pit or why I came out of it so quickly. At most, that was ten days or so of depression. But I also don’t know why I couldn’t recognize it as that while I was experiencing it. Note to self: tired, unproductive, gloomy, unwilling to make a smidgen of effort to live in a neater space = depression.

Today, though, the sun shone. I walked the dog and admired flowers (azaleas, I think, but I could be making that up) and felt summer in the air. My characters stirred in my brain and maybe even started chatting. And it’s March, which means February — almost always the worst month of the year for me — won’t be back for another year. Fingers crossed that the same is true for the part of me that lets empty plastic bags sit on end tables for days on end.

Eating the rainbow

21 Saturday Feb 2015

Posted by in Randomness

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It’s 1PM, and I’ve eaten a salad and stew today. Vegetables (and fruits) included, in rainbow order: red onion, strawberries, beets, cranberries, carrots, sweet potato, onion, avocado, arugula, spinach, cucumber, celery, white radish. Probably not entirely in the obvious order — the strawberries were in the salad and the cranberries were in the stew, plus the salad was for breakfast and the stew for lunch — but I am so tempted to run to the store and buy some blueberries just so my rainbow could include blue. I suppose it doesn’t really include purple, either, but red onion could count as purple.

Yesterday I wanted stew, so I went out and bought stew meat but I didn’t read any recipes first. I got home and started reading but I didn’t have all the ingredients for any stew that sounded interesting, so after looking for a while, I got annoyed and decided, eh, stew. Isn’t the basic premise of stew — you know, in a historical romance novel sort of way — to soften tough meat while making limited food stretch to feed many? It can’t really be all about the rules.

So I made stew. I browned some beef in a little bit of bacon fat, and while it cooked, I chopped vegetables. Carrots, celery, onion — but then, hey, I had some beets to use up. And I need to eat more sweet potato, I know the nutrients are good for me, but I’m tired of the taste, so stew’s a good way to hide it. Two cups of chicken broth, a half cup or so of balsamic vinegar, a couple teaspoons of Italian herbs, a couple pressed cloves of garlic, a bay leaf, some salt, dump everything into the crock-pot and walk away. Until about a hour before it ought to be done, when I added a bunch of spinach, purchased at the farmer’s market on Wednesday, and a handful of frozen cranberries. Why cranberries? Because the most interesting recipe I found — which I couldn’t follow, because I didn’t have the other ingredients — was for a stew with cranberries in it.

beef stew with cranberries

It was delightfully weird. I’m not sure what made it quite so pink, whether it was the beets or the cranberries or maybe it was both, but it had a sweet tanginess that went so well with the taste of meat. The dogs got a tiny taste of it last night and today, when I was eating lunch, Zelda kept putting her paws on my knees as if to remind me that she should not be forgotten. I let her lick out my bowl while I gave B a little bit of the broth in his own bowl and both dogs licked their bowls until every last speck was gone, plus three more licks on each spot, just to make absolutely sure.

Even the contrast of textures worked. The sweet potatoes got mushy, of course, like they do, but the beets stayed solid and the carrots were somewhere in between. Combined, it was a little of everything.

I think I’ve made myself hungry again. I’m really not, though — I just want to go eat again because it’s such a fun meal. So instead…well, I ought to go write.

The last few days haven’t gone well on the writing front. The combination of yoga every day, walking every day, writing every day, sticking to AIP every day… on Thursday, I hit my limit. I was tired, deep-down, had-enough, fed-up-with-everything sort of tired. I went off the diet, ate things that I wasn’t supposed to, didn’t do yoga, didn’t write, and then yesterday, surprise, was really quite sure that I was coming down with something. Today I’m feeling okay, though, so I am trying to get back on the plan.

It may be that the morning pages were the instigation. They’re supposed to unleash your creativity, inspire you to let the words flow, but I’ve used them this week as self-analysis, my own internal psycho-therapy and … ha, my old therapist would be pleased that I just caught myself intellectualizing. I wanted to say that it’s interesting, but that’s not how I feel about it. I feel… I think hurt is the right word. I keep letting the words go and I’m so damn mean to myself. Seriously, I would never talk to another human being the way I talk to myself when I am just spewing forth. I think I’m getting worthwhile discoveries from it, but I seriously need to cover my walls with positive affirmations to counter the unkind self-talk that simmers just under the surface. Or — and this is probably really what I need to do — work on where all that negativity is coming from and see how I can heal it. That, however, sounds like a huge life project, so perhaps I’m just going to go back to doing yoga and writing every day. Including the writing sprints, which truly fell by the wayside in the past week. I should be somewhere in Week 3 of my Write Plan, but I haven’t even reminded myself of what week 3 includes. Oops.

Wow, this blog post really wandered away from my rainbow topic. Oh, well, it’s words, it’s writing, and now that my fingers are warmed up, I think I’ll go stare at one of my files for a while. This morning, half asleep, Meredith started talking to me, so maybe the short story is going to come first. I think it really is starting to get somewhere. I hope so, anyway!

Lost words

18 Wednesday Feb 2015

Posted by in Personal, Yoga

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Why is it that the words we lose always feel like the best words? Those words that disappear into the mists of the ether were definitely great words, not the usual run of the mill mediocre words. *sigh*

I guess I’m getting over it already. But I am definitely including those now disappeared and almost forgotten words in my word count for the day.

Today marks the end of the second week of my Write Plan. It’s not gone so well. Oops, I guess I’m on the wrong blog for writing about writing. All right, I will not post that update here. Instead here, yoga thoughts!

A year ago, I was sure that I was never doing a side plank. (I promise, when I’m in a side plank, my expression is nothing like the one that woman is wearing. I’m probably not nearly that high off the ground either.) So, obviously, I was wrong about never doing a side plank otherwise I wouldn’t be writing about it, but actually, two things interest me about the side plank.

The first is how a little change, a tiny piece of advice, can make a huge difference. C and I were talking about it, me still on the “ain’t never going to happen,” but with a recent try-and-fail to my name, when she said, “You have to lift your hips.” Hmm. Interesting thought. I tried again the next time it came up in my yoga podcast and bang, there I was. I can’t really explain the dynamics — I don’t have the vocabulary for kinesthetics or motion — but in all the different ways instructors described how to do side plank, the idea of lifting hips high was either never included or never sunk in. And what a change. The lower your hips go, the harder the pose is to hold. The energy of holding your body up like that is coming from your core and side, not your arm and feet. I’m not going to say that it’s made it easy, but today I held side plank on both sides for the full count (or almost) which would have been unthinkable a while ago.

Which brings me to the second thing that’s interesting to me about side plank — how quickly one can go from “impossible” to “routine.” School was always easy for me. I never had the moments of struggle with a problem I didn’t understand or a thing I couldn’t learn, but as a parent, watching R try to read, I had this faith that he could get it, would get it. It wasn’t irrational, but his learning disabilities looked so dramatic that I had been warned that it wasn’t likely. Well, he did get it, and now reading is routine for him. But that move, from impossible to routine, it’s awesome. I want to describe it with a miracle synonym that doesn’t have any religious connotations, but the ones the internet gives me aren’t right at all. But it’s like life achievement points, leveling up in the game of yoga or school or whatever your challenge goal is. I’m thinking about this because on the one hand, I think it’s ridiculous to find such a sense of satisfaction in my body being able to do something that it has never, ever, ever *needed* to do — it’s not like mastering brain surgery and saving a life! But on the other hand, leveling up is leveling up and it’s gratifying, even when the end goal is trivial.

I’m still feeling sad about my lost words. They were good words, so maybe I’ll start trying to retrieve them. But first I’m adding a category for yoga, because apparently doing yoga every day means a lot of thinking about yoga.

The Artist’s Way

15 Sunday Feb 2015

Posted by in Writing

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No words yesterday. None, zip, nada. Zero.

But! My kitchen is 99% done. I still need under-cabinet lights and, more importantly, to eliminate the wires sticking out of the walls where those under-cabinet lights will get installed. Plus, possibly, a tile back-splash, the cost of which rather makes me question the need. But the microwave is up and the sink has been re-plumbed (because of a persistent minor drip). Everything got to come out of a cupboard and then go back in.

Also lots of household chores done, from laundry and clean sheets to dusting, including paintings and windows sills and baseboards, some vacuuming, sweeping the back porch, much dish-washing, in coordination with healthy cooking, of course. Also multiple dog walks, some extended playtime with dogs, and yoga. And there the day was, gone. It was 9PM and I thought about writing, but… I didn’t do it.

I did, however, spend some time reading The Artist’s Way. I’ve had this book recommended to me multiple times and, in fact, came very close to doing a group therapy workshop centered around it, but every time I picked it up, I got stuck on the spirituality involved. The author is in recovery and she’s a higher power person, by which I mean a believer in an active, involved, interactive creator. I’m… not. Not so much, anyway.

Maybe that all comes down to parents? My parents were present but strongly encouraged independence. A skinned knee might get a band-aid, but the band-aid probably came with “you’re fine, go play” and chances were probably good that before that came, “you know where the band-aids are.” Three kids under five and boo-boos get short shrift. It’s strange to try to imagine how very young my parents were back then.

At any rate, The Artist’s Way author believes in a benevolent creative force working through us for positive growth and I kept getting stuck on my inability to buy in to that. Do I find the punitive Old Testament God more plausible? Well, yeah, kind of, I do. Or God as love, sure. But God as creation? As a force of creative energy focused on art? That seems pretty idealistic in a world that includes fungus and cancer and tooth decay, slime molds, termites, gangrene… and, you know, dozens of other things that involve decay, destruction and death. Yesterday, however, I managed to shut up the questioning me long enough to break through and get into some different territory and there’s definitely some good stuff in that book. I’m going to have to work on at least accepting the spiritual side — pretending I believe until I believe or until I can’t pretend any more — and give the other aspects of it a try.

One of those aspects is to write Morning Pages every day. Three pages. It irks my analytical side that it specifically says three pages, but doesn’t offer a clue to what size notebook you might be writing in. Three pages on a yellow legal pad is a hell of a lot compared to three pages in the kinds of journals I used in college. But these Pages (yes, I capitalized again on purpose) are the starting place of this book’s approach to developing creativity, and I’m willing to go along and give it a try. So I’m revising my Write Plan — which I’m allowed to do, since it’s my plan — to start each day with Morning Pages. They’ll count as 350 words of my word count goal, because yes, I am obsessive enough that I did manual word counts on this morning’s pages and my loose-leaf notebook gives me room to write about 115-120 words per page.

After one day, I can’t say that it feels like I’ve unleashed great wonders of creativity, but it did give me room for some interesting thinking, as well as some satisfying metaphors. No one is ever supposed to read Morning Pages, including the author of them. They are written and then the page is turned and filed away. And they are written in longhand, with no corrections. The idea is to be setting your writing free and since that is definitely something I need, I’m willing to give it a try. But I pointed out in today’s pages that I was convinced a Creator couldn’t be a snob, since he/she/they’d created snot and farts as well as sunrises and starlit skies, and I want to remember that thought, not lose it to the swamp of spew that the Morning Pages will inevitably become.

Last thought before I go do something useful… yesterday, for Valentine’s Day, I had leftovers for dinner. This is a literal truth. It’s also a technical truth. And yet, what I had was a starter of prosciutto and melon, followed by a salad of mixed salad greens, avocado, and white radish, sprinkled with lime juice and Himalayan pink salt, and finished with a grass-fed beef burger accompanied by avocado slices and garlic-salted sweet potato fries.

prosciutto and melon image

Salad-whiteradish

burger

And what different stories can be created from that one reality! Poor me, leftovers all alone on Valentine’s Day. Lucky me, delicious gourmet dining in peaceful solitude. (Well, as peaceful as it gets when three dogs are staring at every bite taken.) Both true stories, but so different in their emotional weight. For me, the latter story is really the true one. I was quite pleased with my dinner last night, and loved the process of going from, “Hmm, what am I going to eat? I should really finish up those salad greens and that radish and … I guess I should clean out the refrigerator. If I peel this sweet potato and cut out the bad bits, I can use that. Ugh, this melon has dripped on the shelf…” to the moment of sitting down to my fancy dinner on my great-grandmother’s china and then remembering that it was Valentine’s Day.

Back to the writing thoughts: I’ve hit my word count for the day, so I’ve got writing sprints to do with fiction. Two of them. Today is the day where I break my chain of fail and start my chain of success. (That belongs on an infomercial for a motivational speaker in its level of hokiness, but — as the Artist’s Way author might say, people in creative recovery have no room for snarky self-doubt, so motivational self-talk it is!)

Being productive in the right (wrong?) direction

13 Friday Feb 2015

Posted by in Writing

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I picked up the mail while walking the dogs this morning. (1.5 mile walk, that I did not record on the annoying mapmyrun app. That thing is getting deleted from my phone in the very near future, because it is seriously annoying to be woken up by a beeping phone informing me that someone in my Facebook network just completed a work-out. I thought I had it set to not give me alerts, but apparently this news was so imperative and pressing that of course I would really want to know. I barely even want to know about my own exercise, much less someone else’s. Deletion coming soon, maybe even tonight.)

Anyway, I picked up the mail, and yay! The final paperwork from the insurance company was there, so I spent a chunk of the morning dealing with that. The personal banker kindly suggested that I might want to look into a line of credit should this ever happen again and while I appreciated the suggestion — I did, it was a good suggestion and she was undoubtedly right — all I could think was no, no, no, never let this happen again. My house and I are going to decline into shabby old age together, never letting work people through the door again. Well, except maybe for very soon to get the microwave installed again, because it’s still not. And the under counter lights that I don’t have. And the tile backsplash. And perhaps a new front door, because the wood in the old door jamb is rotting. Sigh. I suppose never is idealistic.

Also in the mail, not so yay, a notification from Honda that my air bag is dangerous. Like dangerous, dangerous. Shards of metal impaling your passenger kind of dangerous, because of the specific years of the car and the living in a humid client. Gah. I thought I’d already dealt with that.

So first bank, a certain amount of time, second bank, very quick. Came home and went online to do some exciting (not really) bill paying. Called R to find out what sort of schedule would work for dealing with the car, plus also warn him that no one should be riding in the front passenger seat. Discovered that he’s having computer problems and hoped I could help him with a new battery. Seemed to me to not be the most sensible plan, given that his computer has been a problem for him for a while. Called Honda to schedule the car repair, discovered that I was right, I was done. Went online, found out that I had my last tax form. Finalized my taxes. (Are you bored yet? I’m bored.) Spent some time researching computers for R, exchanged a few emails.

Suddenly, it was noon. I’d missed yoga, I hadn’t done any writing, and I had totally forgotten that A Lonely Magic was free today, so I hadn’t bothered to mention it to anyone. ARGH. And I was tired.

Yesterday, I was also tired. I wound up writing 1K words, but not doing a writing sprint and not having any of the words been fiction. And no yoga, either. Oh, but kayaking was wonderful. Really lovely. Being on the water was so peaceful, and being in control of my own boat was terrific. But I’d expected today to be a great day as a result of that, and instead I took all of that great energy and dumped it into terrible, boring, bureaucracy kinds of stuff.

Eventually, I took the dogs for another walk (again, 1.5 miles), made myself a delicious dinner (bacon avocado burger, no bun, yum), managed one writing sprint of about 30 minutes that netted me 275 words, which are good words except that they don’t continue the scene that I was working on, which means eventually they’ll have be smoothed over and probably won’t survive as written, and did 30 minutes of yoga.

But it wasn’t 1000 words. Sure, lots of useful stuff done and I ought to be able to appreciate that. But here it is, Friday night (specifically 8:30 on a Friday night) and I still appear to be a little confused about the primary job in my life — write, write, write, darn it.

That said, I’m on the verge of giving myself a break. Well, not really a break — these were stupid words, but they were words and there are enough of them that… almost? Not quite? Yes! I have broken 1000 words written today (barely, I admit) and now I’m going to go play WoW and enjoy the rest of my evening. And tomorrow, I will start again, because this is a good productive zone, even if it didn’t include all the words it should have included.