048: Writing Tips I think I'll share

In my little attempt at procrastinating today, I decided to set down in stone (or a word.doc) the rule that I stand by with my writing. And when finished (and needing to waste a little more time) have decided to share it with you all.

1.       Write and write every day. This should be a no brainer: you can’t call yourself a writer is you are sitting around drinking coffee. Get into a routine and stick to it – make a star chart if that helps, but make sure you write something. I try to keep a journal, but it doesn’t always work – I have about three on the go at the moment – and use it to jot down anything that you think deserves to be formulated into words. Write out conversations you overhear, scenarios you think up, or even just a re-cap of what you did that day. Write it all out.   

2.       Read – Widely and Critically. Reading has got to be the best way to improve your own writing. You can see how others handle the craft, their word choice and how they handle the hard stuff. But then, when you have finished reading, take the time to think about how and why it worked (or didn’t) and then apply it to your own writing.

3.       Don’t let the Editor write and don’t let the Writer edit. I find that my editor and my writer live in different parts of my brain and although I need them both, I don’t need them all the time. Allow yourself to be both at different times. It will save yourself a lot of internal conflict.

4.       Finish What you Start – even if it’s a recount of your day or an elaborate shopping list. Learn the art of a complete story; don’t leave your readers hanging or get too comfortable with the incomplete.

5.       Create Writing Time and Space – Virginia Woolf famously said that a writer needs a room of one’s own. I’m going to expand on that and say you also need an hour or five.  Don’t let anything or anyone interrupt that time when you are in your writing zone, Barr the door and brew some tea (or wine, whatever it is you need) and just write.

6.       Learn When It Is Time To Do Something Else – When your hit a road block that starts to hurt your head, do something else. Getting up and shifting perspective makes for a more productive writing session next time and will hopefully stop you before you bash your head onto the desk.

7.       Don’t Be Afraid To Talk About Your Writing. If you can’t talk about your writing, how do you expect to write about it? Have someone you trust read over it, (or a complete stranger, whatever you are more comfortable with) make yourselves a pot of tea and talk about it. Getting the perspective from a reader is invaluable for a writer and two brains are almost always better than one when you are trying to get over a tricky road block.

8.       A Book Is Not A Baby – Learn To Take Criticism Well! If you feel the need to defend everything you have ever written, you will never be able to let your writing grow and evolve into something much better. I struggle with this a lot and still very far from mastering it, but it one of the memos I have posted in the hope it sinks in soon.

9.       Read What You Write Aloud – If it doesn’t sound right, it might not be. Or better yet, get someone else to read it aloud – if they aren’t reading it with the same tone or expression you intended, you might need to re-write.

10.    Enjoy The Art Of Rewriting – and re-rewriting and re-re-rewriting. You writing can always get better, and if not, you did save your previous draft – right?  

So, what do you think? Which ones do you struggle with the most – which ones are the easiest and how to you manage to overcome it all?

I would love to hear, x Katie 

047: Simply Blooming

I love Spring - it's my favourite season and for me (and everyone else in the Southern hemisphere) today marks the first day of this glorious season. The suddenly blue sky pulled me out of the house and into my garden; I garden I haven't yet had the chance to explore. And there I discovered that I have a flowering garden.

I think that gardens that come with rental properties are often like a gift with purchase, because we take then, because, well, presents, but then you realise that you don't actually need another hand cream or a ridiculously small shampoo. At the last few rental properties, the 'garden' has consisted of a slab of concrete around a wonky clothes line. My last place actually had some mint growing, but it was almost consumed by weeds and bugs.

When we moved in - during a very bleak winter - we didn't venture out into the garden all that much. But today, with the first reminder of what summer is like, the garden called me out.

The touch of colour is already creeping across the greenery and much to my surprise, downy white flowers are beginning to bloom on the tree outside my room. 

 

Blossoms have always held a special place in my heart - from the blooming, but unproductive apple tree in mum's veggie patch to the trees that lined an otherwise very ugly street. But the most memorable were the blossoms outside my room while I was living in England. Two magnificent blossom trees that sat on the lawn between five university houses, that so clearly told us what time of year it was.   

To me, blossoms have become a part of my home - the airy sent that consumes everything, the soft and felling beauty of nature. So bring on Spring I say, bring back summer dresses and flowers and picnics and berries. Someone, send me the sun. 

046: One Week Of Baby Steps

A week ago I wrote about my not so drastic attempt to make some changes in my life and now I though I would share in the progress.

I mentioned that I wanted to change only a few little things, in the hope that I would slowly evolve into a better person. I gave myself a new habit to add in each day and see if by a week I would be able to maintain them the whole time.

My little goals for the week were:

1. Making My Bed  Every Day: - This I managed to do, almost everyday, I was quite lenient with this one - I didn't give myself a time limit to get it done and yes, there may have been a day where I straighten the sheets up just before dinner, but the bed was made! The only day I didn't do it was when I changed the sheets, and that counts for something doesn't it?

2. Showering Every Day: - The whole point of this test was the 'little steps' idea. And yes, I am pleased to tell you that I was able to shower daily, thank you very much. 

3. Get Dressed: - Ok, there have been some days when although I am showered, I have been known to slip back into my dressing gown and pot around the house in not much more. Tuesday may have been spent like this, and for this I am very ashamed. 

4. Clean Kitchen: - My sister helped me with this, a lot. Wouldn't let me leave one plate in the sink, so thankfully this one was a breeze.  

5. Write Something: And not so breeze, even with my beautiful writing room I still struggle to sit down and actually write something. But looking to improve on this one. A lot. 

 

6. Talk to Someone - I bent the rules with this one, and made a lot of exceptions to the rules. I included shop assistants and the guy at the petrol station but words were exchanged, so that's good! But also tried a little better to keep talking to those who I'm no longer seeing everyday - my old house mates, friends from work and old flame or two. Baby steps remember. 

7. Drink 2lts of Water every day. I can do this one almost without thinking, I have a litre bottle of water that I keep with me most of the time - whether I am at work or at home, soon enough I have gotten through two bottles and its not even lunch time. 

Each time I added new step in, the one previous became a little easier, so hopefully, with time, the idea of a social life of a writing schedule wont seem so daunting and I might get around to running up that mountain. 

xo Katie  

045: A Room of One's Own

I have mentioned that I have moved house a few times now, so it's probably time I wrote about my new beautiful place. I shan't write about it all, but I will give you folks on the internet a tour of my favourite room in the whole house.

This, in true Katie style is my awfully messy study. It was a condition of the house hunting that there would be a room that I could claim to be my own aside from my bedroom. The Virginia Woolf inspired room of my own. And when we found this one both me and my sister (now my new roomie) fell in love. She with the master bedroom with ensuite and walk in robe - I with the spare bedroom. 

I have, for a long time, hated having my desk in my bedroom, because it becomes a space of clutter where all the things I am supposed to be doing get piled and chaos reigns. And even though this room is still the messiest in the house (I'm claiming that it's because it is where we are keeping all the things without a home while we are moving but I'm not sure how long I can play that card for) it is my favourite. 

It is the sunniest room in the morning, which also happens to be my prime writing time. It is literally a stones throw away from my bedroom (prefect for tossing anything that doesn't belong in one to the other) and I have grand plans for making it my little writing haven in our home. 

Do you out there also have your writing spaces? Your own Ms Woolf room? Or simply a corner in a hectic life? Are they as chaotic as mine? 

xo 

Katie  

044: Habits of Change

Are you one of those people who have that have an overly optimistic voice in your head - that "Of course you will do this. You can clean the whole house, weed the garden, have those coffee dates you postponed three weeks ago and go for a run! And you will be back in time to watch the Bachelor, ready, OK!" 

Yeah, that's what my voice sound like. She is the overly talented side of Katie - the one who can do a triple somersault whilst completing her tax forms. She also has pom-poms sometimes, often which she uses to hit my subconscious when I start accidentally searching flights for cheap around the world flights, again. 

I wake up most morning deciding that I will achieve so much, and go to bed so proud because I showered.  

When I moved into my new house, last week I had decided that I was going to be making some changes. (Briefly outlined here) and I have been trying to decide the best way to go about it. 

For a while now, I have been following Gretchen Rubin's The Happiness Project for some time now and have been curious to start one of her 21 Day Challenges. I had a look through hers and found myself with some problems. Firstly, although there are some great selections, such as "How to De-Clutter Your House" and "Stop Yelling At Your Kids" I couldn't seem to find a "How to Be a Grown Up" listed under any of the topics. Also, you had to pay for them, and I find that sort of lunacy insulting.

So I have decided to write my own. 

And because I have decided to make both my overachieving brain and my lazy brain happy, I've made it an abridged 21 Day Challenge, so more like a seven day challenge. 

I'm not sure how Gretchen does hers, but this is how I am going to do mine. 

I learnt a few years I watched this:   

which suggests that the best way to get into a habit is to actually do the new things. (seriously, why didn't I think of that, instead of googling how to do things and writing this great long spiel about doing things, I could actually be being said things) 

I have completed one of these chains before an it almost worked (aside from the fact that it isn't any more) and very much indent to give it another go. But rather than just one habit, I'm going to build mine up - like Gretchen does (I think) starting with the little things and working up. My little things are:

1. Making My Bed Day - I actually had to stop writing this so I could dash off and make my bed. 

2. Showering Every Day - I want something I can be proud of - see above comment

3. Get Dressed! (can you see what I'm getting at here

4. Clean Kitchen 

5. Write Something 

6. Talk to Someone - this might seem super easy (almost as easy as everything else on this list) as a fairly ridiculously strong introvert, this might be the one where I struggle

7. Drink 2lts of Water every day.

These are my little goals, goals which hopefully both sides of my brain will be able to manage, and hopefully, after a week, I might be an entirely different person. Maybe. 

xo 

Katie 

043: Crying Over Ripped Stockings

My life changed a few months ago. I was sitting in my car, in a darkened multilevel car park. I had had an awful day. I had been yelled at by customers and had some harsh words from management. There was a run in my stockings and I had just been told that the guy I was seeing was also seeing someone else. I was sobbing into the steering wheel, cursing the world, hating on everything and everyone and hoping that these feeling would stop. 

It was a bit job. Something to pass the time until a better offer came around. And he was supposed to just be a fling to help me get over the last mess of a boy I had endured. The stocking were only Coles brand tights and cost a few dollars a pair not even worth the tears. 

And there I was, crying. 

In a moment of tear stained clarity, I realised that the things I had been striving for were not actually things I wanted. I had been working so hard for so long that I couldn't remember why I had wanted them in the first place. I decided in that moment that I was going to stop. 

Sniffing back the last of my tears, I drove home, flipped open my laptop and began a new search. Houses to Rent by the Beach. I sat there all night, scrolling through rental property after rental property trying to find the new home that would bring around the new Kate. 

Now, a few months on from that, I am sitting in my new house, looking out the sunning window into a flowering garden. I have not had to find a park in a multi level car park in almost three weeks, 

I have only had to wear stocking when I want to and almost happily given up interest in men. 

I find it is such a rare moment when I stop and take control of something, be it at work or in a relationship. I am so content in taking the back seat and watch the passing traffic while someone else drives and brings me to my destination, even if I don't know where it is. For the first time in a long time, I pushed the rest of the world out of the drivers seat and I took over. 

I chose the town where I was to live based on it closeness to my parents and its flowering trees on Main Street not because of the university that was in the centre of it. I chose a job that could build into a career not something just to pay the bills. Finally, I have chosen a life that I am going to be proud of living. 

So, I hope you can join me, in what a really hope will be a slightly more detail and consistent blog that this age has previously been. 

Here's hoping that this is the beginning of something wonderful, and not the beginning of a new beginning. 

xo 

Katie 

042: I Bought Peace on the Side of the Road

Last week, while walking through the streets of Melbourne, I was approached by a monk selling prayer beads. The friend I was with instantly brushed him aside, but I paused, took the beads and gave a small donation for a life time of peace and prosperity.

When I returned to my friend he gave me a disgruntled look, suggested that had been hoodwinked and apologised for not warning me that they might ask for money. But I gave him a disgruntled look in return told him he had no part to play in my decision to donate to a cause.

The beads I bought are nothing special, round wooden beads with a Chinese character printed on one, and as far as I can tell, are no different to any other beaded bracelet I own. However, there is something, now I think about it, that makes them unique.

And no, they are not impregnated with liquid luck or powdered peace.

The beads make me think.

For the first time today, I pulled these beads out of my dresser and decided to wear them. And in that decision I remembered the monk and his promise for peace. The man I had met, who is not nothing more than a memory of yellow robes and a bag full of bracelets followed me around all day. Whenever I paused to fidget with beads, or they knocked together, I remembered him. Somehow the peace he had promised me was coming, regardless of the amount that I paid for them, and it was my awareness brought me peace.

I have been doing a lot of reading on the importance of contentment  and these peace beads were just another reminder to focus on the present. In my uneducated opinion, peace is loss of worry and stress, of forgetting the past and accepting the future. Of all the things I wish for in life, I wish for peace. It is too easy to wish for wealth or for love - but even with those two examples, I don't think anything in my life has caused me as much stress  as the importance of working of money or the long awaited for 'other' that is bound to come into my life soon. I am a natural worrier, and although one day I very much wish to be contently financial and happy knowing someone loves me, I think I would use my wish to stop stressing about them quite so much and allow myself to live the life that I am making for myself.

So today, by simply having something strapped around my wrist, I had a constant reminder to focus on the Now of my life, to focus on the important things and accept the world around me. My friend was right in being sceptical, the monk was gathering money for his cause, and not everyone would have had a moment of enlightenment like mine. But I think that if my small donation brought a little funding into a small community that needed it, and a little peace in my life where I didn't realise I needed it, surely that is five dollars well spend.

Kathleen x `