10 Ways to Procrastinate Writing Fiction

#1.  Resurrect a lapsed blog.

As I told you last summer, I signed up for a Writing Fiction class at my local community college, rather than deciding what kind of graduate degree I want to pursue.  I was very excited.  And as you know if you've been reading me, to get warmed up and make sure I didn't embarrass myself in class, over the summer I did a free online course through Open University called Start Writing Fiction.  I was concerned because I had never written a story before, not since I was a tiny little girl and wrote only a few sentences.  Class started in late August, a little while after I wrote my last post for this blog. 
At first I was really inspired, I had a bunch of ideas (mostly hare-brained) for short stories.  I wrote one of them over the course of a number of weeks, but it turned out sounding stiff and bloodless.  It was about a middle-aged character having a very quiet sort of experience.  Even though the class I'm taking is at a community college and meets in the evening, I am the only 'adult learner' in there, the rest of them look to be 18-19 years old.  I wanted to write something that they would like, since we have to read our stories aloud and have the class critique them.  I scrapped my first story at the last minute (one week before my first 'workshop') and wrote another, a YA short story about teenage Wiccans.  My classmates ate it up, although they misunderstood the story somewhat.
Once I survived my first workshop, I found to my dismay that all my ideas and inspiration had dried up, and I didn't know what to write.  I tried writing another story, and started it twice but both times it sounded stiff and contrived.
Meanwhile, Ariel had told me about the Young Writer's Program part of NaNoWriMo , and I helped Primo sign up.  He got really excited about it, and started writing character bios and story ideas.  Soon his friends were signed up too, and even Radish asked me to help him make an account.  I decided to sign myself up for the regular adult version of NaNo, the 50,000 word write-a-novel-in-a-month challenge.  I figured there was no way I'd make it to 50K, but writing toward that goal would give me something meaty to bring to my second (and final) workshop for class.  The professor seems to prefer unfinished 'first chapter of my novel' pieces over finished short stories, and the class, too, criticizes those less.  Anyway, I took my most substantial idea and wrote an outline, put it aside until November 1st.
Today.  I tried, this morning, to write from that outline, and the result was the poorest, most bloodless writing that I've done so far.  I think I might scrap the whole idea and write 'by the seat of my pants' in a genre, rather than straight real-world fiction.

But for this evening, I'm finding lots of other things somehow more pressing or interesting than getting to work on writing fiction.  There's this poor, neglected blog, for instance.  How could I let it languish for one more day? :)  Also, there's:

#2.  File away the kids' homeschool work in their notebooks.

#3.  Make a cup of tea, and some toast with jam to go along with it.

#4.  Hmm, laundry.  No reason to let it sit, just because it's Saturday night!

#5.  Christmas shopping!  Online, natch...

#6.  Email.  Oh, so urgent, these messages, must read right now...

#7.  Get ahead on tomorrow's chores: plan meals for the week, write lessons for the week (including all-new 'Baby Lessons'! more on that in my next post!)

#8.  Read-- if I can't write fiction today, I can still immerse myself in it.  Specifically, a terrific book by Octavia Butler, Wild Seed.  It's so interesting to read this book after reading about it and reading the first paragraphs, broken down, in Orson Scott Card's How to Write Science Fiction and Fantasy.  I'm having one of my reading crises again-- I've stacked myself up with too many things to read, trying to find inspiration.  I have an old favorite, Orson Scott Card's Maps in a Mirror out from the library for over a week, but untouched.  And a fun, YA collection of short holiday stories called My True Love Gave to Me.  Then there's the short story collection (Best American Short Stories 2014) that I don't have to read for class, but I feel like I should anyway (it was the 2013 edition that was mandatory for class, but I finished that).  And the boys have several things out from the library that I want to read, and I have a few more on my NOOK, and don't get me started on magazines and non-fiction (I have three or four books about helping your homeschooler get into college which I haven't started yet).

#9.  TV- and this one is ridiculous, because we only have the most basic cable and on a Saturday night there is *nothing on*, not until SNL and that's hours away. 

#10.  Make a list of some kind.  Oh.  Check. 

I guess I'll be mad at myself tomorrow if I don't at least make an attempt to write something worth continuing (the 150 words I put down this morning is not it).  But first, I hear Snorzy talking upstairs, more than an hour after I put him down in his crib.  A few more minutes before I have to face the blank page!

Change the Conversation

"If you don't like what's being said, change the conversation."  I've been somewhat obsessively watching Mad Men lately, catching up on this series after Sweet Hubby and I took a loooong break from watching (we don't get the channel and have to wait for it to come along on Netflix).  I find myself lying awake at night, unable to sleep, thinking about what's going on with the characters and what could happen next.  I can't blame Mad Men for my insomnia, I'd be awake anyway-- I just think it's funny that after I go through the catalog of my own worries, I turn to those of the fictional characters I'm most involved with at the moment.  Today I was trying to express to a friend what I find so interesting and escapist about this series-- and I realized (aside from the costumes) it's the relationship of the women in the show to motherhood- or rather their complete lack of interest in their children.  Even the stay-at-home trophy wives in the show (with one exception) have very little to do with their kids, more interested in their clothes, husbands and affairs.  It's not that there are no women on the show, or no mothers, or even no children-- there just aren't mothers who build their lives around their children, even while they are new mothers and the children are adorable babies.

It's little wonder I find this fascinating after a day that starts with waking to the sound of Snorzy's voice in the other room, followed by homeschooling and getting the big guys to their activities all while chasing a very active toddler, through dinnertime and shuffling everyone off to bed-- there isn't a moment of my day that doesn't have to do with my children.  And I love it, in fact I love it too much-- I can't seem to wrap my head around doing anything else with my time even though I know I'll probably be mad at myself ten or twenty years from now if I don't go back to school or find a creative outlet or a career now while I'm young(ish).


I haven't been keeping up with this blog because I haven't been keeping up with my self-imposed craft challenge-- as we started our new school year and spring turned warm and wonderful, I just couldn't get excited about making things.  The temptation is to start a new blog, the way I used to start a new journal periodically as I felt I was moving into a new phase of my life (starting college, starting a career, starting a family).  I've learned though, that what works best for me is to just turn the page and start fresh from where I am, unapologetically.  When Primo was small I bought a colorful composition book at the grocery store and started a hybrid journal/scrapbook, over the years I've continued through five of these books (every time I'm afraid I'll run out of colors and have to repeat, I'll find a new one in the stationary aisle), which veer wildly in content as I go through phases of interests-- from fashion and makeup to garden plans and children's parties, preschool play time activites, literature, career planning, homeschooling and travel.  I never worry what it's 'about' or whether it fits-- it's just a brain dump, a window into what's going on in my cranium.  Never anything very serious, I'm not out to impress anyone with my sophistication!


(the pink one on the left is the original-- started ~November 2002)

And so, this blog.  We'll see if I pick up my craft challenge again, maybe when it gets cool or something causes me to get inspired again around making things.  I'll never stop writing about homeschooling-- that is, unless I stop homeschooling.  Right now stopping is not in the cards, although theoretically I've always said that I'm only committed to homeschooling one year at a time.  So, what else will I write about?  Stay tuned and see.  For today, here is a look at my Fair Acre (um, actually just a fraction of an acre in the middle of a small city)...it seems Mr. Groundhog has moved on, so I'm cautiously planting some baby vegetables this weekend, and hoping he doesn't come back to munch them!


baby kale


my enemies-- I planted two tiny rhododendrons side by side the first spring we lived in the house, and ten years later I've threatened to tear them out nine times


and right next to my enemies, my oldest plant friend-- a Jackmanii Clematis that I planted that same first spring, ten years ago, as a little start ordered from the Kelly Nurseries catalog.  The other two varieties that I planted never grew.  Every time I think he's done and not coming back, up he pops again!


some happy hostas, my new best friends of the plant world.  I love how lush and lettuce-y they are in the spring, and how happy to grow and thrive without any fussing from me.


and, a frenemy-- the wild rose climbing rose in the middle of this shot was a tiny bush donated by a friend years ago.  I didn't realize it was a climber, or I wouldn't have put it in my precious sunny patch.  He choked out a prettier rose that grew next to him until last fall, and his tendrils catch me as I try to weed and plant in the patch.  The roses are tiny and cute and plentiful, but I think it's going to be moving day for this guy, one day soon.  For now, I have his longest branches trained up along the fence-- hope they stay that way until I figure out where to put him!

Just As Long As There Are Two

Several days have gone by, and I've truly been too busy to write- busy with ushering, with the annual homeschool flea market and craft fair, with preparations for Sweet Hubby's birthday.  But I realized tonight, as the hour gets late and I waste my time on this and that, I'm in danger of this blog becoming one of those forlorn 'one post' abandoned blogs.  So just to prevent that outcome, here is a second post.  I promise I have more to say- lots of thoughts to come.
Future posts may contain musings on: routines in our home school, the place of music in our lives, my craft crush, philosophies of parenting, trying to be fully present for the boys and Sweet Hubby too.
I am so distractible these days, sometimes I'm surprised at myself and at how I lack the focus I had just a few years ago.  The hardest thing for me is to direct my energy toward the things that are most important to me.  Somehow I fritter away my hours and days, and only in the last moments before I sleep do I catch myself and swear that the next day I'll do better.  That is my number one motivation for writing, to keep myself "awake" so that I can live my life rather than drift along helplessly.

Out of the Gate

Primo started a blog last year.  One post, then forgot about it until a few weeks ago.  Now he's started it back up again, and posts almost every day.  He doesn't overthink it, just jumps in and rattles on about whatever is on his mind.
Here is his mama, trying to take a leaf from his book.  I've had a book on blogging out of the library for two months.  I've laid awake thinking of names for this blog, like I did when I was pregnant with Snorzy ( boy number three, but I didn't know that then and it was the thought of having to name a girl that kept me up nights).
I want to write about my adventures in homeschooling and raising my three sons.  About cooking and crafting and sometimes feeling ambivalent about my life's work.

For now, I have to take a moment to congratulate myself, just for having begun.

Primo today: duct tape creations, some for the Flea Market Craft Fair on Friday, some just for himself.

Radish today:  in the darkened back room, experimenting with a flashlight and some construction paper, learning about the color spectrum (while Primo at the same time was doing Snap Circuits experiments in the living room.  Good day for science learning in our homeschool!)

Snorzy today:  first word, "bath", while taking a rare morning bath.