Writing Challenges-Beasts, Burdens or Blessings?

by J.lynn | Oct 31, 2017 | Writing

Do you participate in writing challenges?

You know—

NaNoWriMo
PAD
The Writing Cooperative: The 52-Week Writing Challenge
Young Writer’s Project Challenges
100-Day Novel Writing Challenge
Book It!
Monthly Twitter Writing Challenge

Found Poetry Challenges. Short Story Challenges. Flash Fiction Challenges. Kid Lit. Picture Books. Romance. Horror. Fantasy. Share Your Story Challenges. Faith Stories. Share a Story. Double Blind Challenge.

There’s so many!!

If you participate i these challenges, why? What is it about the challenge itself that appeals to you? The community? Is it the motivation you need right now?

Humor me while I ramble.

What’s at the end?

I’ve gone through cycles of NaNo and never written a word while watching writing friends posting about their word counts. I confess. I feel guilty and a little ashamed of myself that my discipline is lacking. And yet, the one time I succeeded at NaNo, I didn’t write about it. I still haven’t finished writing what I started. I still haven’t collected my poems from PAD into a chapbook. I am burdened with a sheath of literary failure because I can’t seem to keep up with the writing community essentials.

Or are they?

I’m reading a book called Essentialism. It lays out plainly why I don’t particularly enjoy writing challenges. They really aren’t essential and I’m in a season of life where eliminating stuff is a priority.

The Process of Waiting

My focus for blogging is not on how to write better/faster/stronger. It’s on the progression of a writer’s heart and soul.

Not the publications. Not the perfections. Not the How-to’s.

Everyone and everyone has read and/or written on the writing tools, platform, voice, processes, tech advice: (GAH! Michael Hyatt has quit blogging and now his website is more like a magazine. Should we all switch from blogging to magazine format? What should the schools of guppies do?)

You know what we all do. We chew pencils and slurp tepid coffee and wait to see what all the other successful bloggers/writers do. Then we do it too. Right?

We watch and wait. The same thing we do every day and night. (Right, Pinky?) We wait for daily activities and long-term events. Some we look forward to and some we want to smash into oblivion.

Today I’m waiting for the cute and scary trick-or-treaters to arrive. I’m grotesquely waiting for my mother to move into heaven. (She has Alzheimer’s. A slow hellish suffering.) I’m waiting for the resolution of a court case. I’m waiting for my headache to dissipate. I’m waiting for a medical condition to resolve or else I’m waiting to learn how to quit fighting and accept it. I’m even waiting to decide some things or waiting for other people to decide some things for me.

I’m waiting for beginnings. I’m waiting for endings.

I’m waiting for opportunity. Even though we have all heard that we must grasp opportunity when it comes our way, do you really know that that one thing is THE thing you SHOULD grasp onto?

No. You don’t. It may be the wrong thing. Opportunity is often hidden in the mundane. We overlook the shallows and depths because our minds trick us into believing we need more, another idea, a better idea, another conference, another workshop, another read through of our favorite writing book.

And we chase the school of fish churning in the fresh waters and turning in tandem without a focus. Exasperating our energy supplies. (No dinner tonight, kids! Mommy’s got three hundred words to write and edit and . . . Stop eating right out of the peanut butter jar. Well, at least wash your hands after you lick your fingers.)

Not More. Less.

The stillness of less and embracing the waiting has freed me up to . . . daydream, ponder, wonder, and wander.

So, my point is—if you’re feeling guilty for not spending your life chasing each and every writing challenge or contest, don’t. Don’t grasp onto all these writing challenges as the means to success when in fact, they may just be the burden you do not need to carry right now.

Chuck Wendig said, “Stories are like wine; they need time. So take the time. This isn’t a hot dog eating contest. You’re not being judged on how much you write but rather, how well you do it. Sure, there’s a balance — you have to be generative, have to be swimming forward lest you sink like a stone and find remora fish mating inside your rectum. But generation and creativity should not come at the cost of quality. Give your stories and your career the time and patience it needs.”

Take a moment to read the wisdom from Ecclesiastes

To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

(Yes, it’s a Byrd’s song, but they stole the lyrics.)

The challenge of a writing challenge is knowing when your life is ready for a challenge. It shouldn’t be a beast you tackle. It shouldn’t be a burden you endure. It should feel like a blessing.

Wait for the right one at the right time.

As for me, I will be participating in PAD this November. If I finish, great! I’ll feel satisfaction. If I don’t, I’m not going to allow myself the burden of guilt or feeling less than for not finishing.

Cheers!

How Writing Poetry Enriches Prose

by J.lynn | Jul 24, 2017 | Reading, Writing

I once heard a fiction writer quip, “Are poets really writers?” I imagine she had never tried her hand at crafting a sestina or sonnet. It’s not as easy as she might think.

Several weeks ago, I was featured in Writer’s Digest’s Poetic Asides. Robert Lee Brewer has a series called “Why I Write Poetry.” There’s a word limit so I didn’t get to the part about how writing poetry deepens and enhances writing prose.

Writers can learn as much from Keats, Jonson, and Frost as a webinar on plot or setting or a workshop on characterization. I would even say, writers could learn more. If they could only get past the stigma of believing that poetry is stuffy or silly or impersonal.

POETRY IS UNSELFISH

Good poetry offers a new perspective on life, empathy for your experiences, summarizes a belief, previews a future, cleanses your pain, gleans from the ancients, wears the sands of time, holds hands with the heavens, and breaks bread with the simple folk as well as the heavily laden. Poetry serves you.

Even if it isn’t eloquent or delicate, is has the potential to reach through the inked pages or screen and touch you. At first, you will not know why. You must peal away the layers to be blessed with the richness of the cadence of words. Prose should do that too.

POETRY INSISTS ON RESPECT

Staring at a blank Word document or a sheet of paper and free writing whatever your heart spills, is simplistic. Puzzling those pieces into a quatrain of iambic pentameter is a thing of beauty and brings many a poet to her knees. If you don’t respect the genre, it won’t respect you back and your writing will suffer from lack of esteem or value. Same goes for prose.

POETRY IS PATIENT

It doesn’t demand. It flirts. It coddles you. It is a secret message that was written personally to you. It reaches inside you and breathes for you when you can’t. Poetry is okay with not being the star of writing genres. It knows its own worth and waits for writers to listen and learn its charms and sage advice. Savor it. Prose can be equally alluring. Learn to sit with the words you write on a page and ask if it is written to take from the reader or give to the reader.

POETRY BREAKS THE RULES WITH STYLE

A stuffy fiction writer is stuck on rules. Poetry teaches her how to play by the rules and then like the rebel it is, it guides her onto a new path. It shows her how to turn the corner without stumbling. And then it woes her to the open dazzling fields of motion, technique, style, and voice.

POETRY RECOGNIZES THE STRENGTH OF WORDS

In poetry, words serve more than one purpose. Because poetic forms often have word limits, poets learn to choose their words wisely. Each word must not only express meaning, each must enhance pacing, balance, tone, and prosody. (I love that word.)

You don’t have to shell out your pennies to read great poetry. Here are a few links to get you started:

Poets and Writers

Poetry Foundation

Academy of American Poets

Pitch Wars PimpMyBio

by J.lynn | Jul 22, 2016 | Challenge

Yesterday, my husband leaned over my laptop and saw the above graphic and asked me, “So, are you hot tarring a roof?” It took me a sec to figure out the pun and to set him straight.

Pitch Wars is not a black-sticky-goop-tossing competition. It’s an opportunity for writers to pair up with mentors who will assist their mentees to whip their WIPs into shape then pitch that baby to agents. I hadn’t heard of it until this year when I stumbled upon a Tweet. I’m a little late to the game . . . but not too late.

I’m still piecing together all the parts but it looks like fun. Here’s a Pitch Wars link where you can find all the goodies. This week I went on a Mentor Blog Hop Scavenger Hunt as I searched for a mentor who might want to take on my manuscript. So much talent. Choosing four was tough.

Right now I’m enthusiastically trolling a #PitchWars Twitter Chat to learn more. (And watching my Chicago Cubbies playing the Brewers. The fam went to the game and I’m on the look-out for them. All I know is they are somewhere along the first-base line.)

In reading through the Pitch War’s rules, an unwritten one is to write a bio. and include a few GIFs. Or not. I don’t GIF much because of the load time issue. I don’t like the lag. Not in books. And not on websites. No offense to those who do.

Anyway, for all practical purposes, my website contains a bio but here are a few other tidbits:

My mom named me Janice but she often called me JanLynn, hence, J.lynn. All one name.
Reading is my escape/vice/passion.
I’m allergic to chocolate. Does that deter me?
I’m an editor with a small publishing house. Don’t believe anyone who tells you that you can edit your own stuff and do it thoroughly. You’re too close to it.
Poetry is my superpower.
I blog about Alzheimer’s at The Slow Forget.
When I was eight, I was almost mauled by a grizzly. I believe in divine intervention.
I also believe you can never have too many pairs of sunglasses.

My next step is to join the Pimp my Bio Contestant Blog Hop. So, that’s where I’m going next.

If you have a manuscript ready, consider joining #PitchWars. I’ll let you know how this goes for me. And if you join, let me know about your experience.

P.S. Cubs win!!

America’s First Feminist Literary Warrior

by J.lynn | Mar 28, 2016 | Reading

A pithy history lesson

History books (and the internet) would have you believe that America’s first feminists were women in the 1800s. Women like Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Susan B. Anthony, Lucretia Mott.

I beg to differ.

My vote goes to Anne Bradstreet (March 20, 1612 – September 16, 1672.)

(more…)

Pondering the Yearly Planner

by J.lynn | Dec 30, 2015 | Organizing

This happens to me every year at this time. I waffle through a bazillion organizers, planners, and systems in hopes I’ll discover THE ONE for me. THE ONE I’ll commit to in good times and bad. THE ONE that will keep me from stumbling through the next year.

THE ONE that will keep me focused and productive.

But, every year, I abandon the chosen beast for scraps of paper, Post-its, and a scrambled memory.

This year I even created a Pinterest board to collect and study the newest versions of the planning vermin. I admit, the colors and swirls of creative energy and blank pages are all enticing but I know what will happen. After selecting the most seductive planner and after a month of diligently scrawling To-Dos and Must-Dos and Must-Remember To Dos, I’ll fall into a rabbit trail and I won’t do.

And then I feel like an organizing failure which squelches my entire impetus for productivity planning in the first place–becoming the princess of organization.

Ah, the perils of planning the planner.

This year, however, I am taking a different approach based on my supposed strengths as suggested by StrengthFinders. Years ago I took the test and learned one of my strengths is ideation so I’m going to harness that power in two ways:

1. The Bullet Journal

I’ve decide to create a Bullet Journal. This is a simplistic modular organizing system more than a planner. Their tagline is “All you need is a notebook and a pen.” After several hundred hours of Pinterest indulgence, I realize I’m a modular visual type of gal.

They got me at “Note-taking and traditional journaling take time; the more complex the entry, the more effort is expended. The more effort expended, the more of a chore it becomes, the more likely you’ll underutilize or abandon your journal.”

Basically, you can use any type of notebook you want (or you can purchase their custom notebook which happens to be sold out right now) then follow their framework. You can mix and match the modules that best serve your needs–business or personal. Sure, it takes planning and a little more pondering than a published one-size-fits-all planner, but that’s the beauty of it.

Find more information simply search Pinterest, Google, or Youtube. It’s become quite a craze.

2. Trello

Secondly, I have created several boards on Trello. Trello is another modular system but it’s online. It allows you to visually organize your projects, tasks, and activities. Beware, there is a learning curve, which I must have attempted at some point because when I logged onto Trello, I found that I had already made an account. Obviously, I had abandoned it. Probably in favor of a paper planner, which I know I abandoned.

After taking another look at Trello, I liked what I saw so I watched a few tutorials. It wasn’t complicated to set up my first project board so I set up ten more. I think I’m in love. It’s modular. It’s visual. It’s drag and drop. You can even connect it to your Google Calendar.

Simply, you create a board, create lists, which you can modify as you like, then label task cards which you can drag and drop into different lists if you need to. Each card allows you to add checklists, add attachments, due dates, or color-coded labels. You can even add members to a particular task. There’s a free version and a paid version. Right now I am using the free version and I have found it to be sufficient for what I need. Here is an example of one of the boards I started:

I love being able to see the big picture of my blogging calendars and to move the To-Dos around at the click of my mouse.

My fear however, is that I may become obsessed with the planning instead of the doing. Seems I’m not the only one who recognizes this conundrum.

You see? For people who love to create and ideate, pondering the planner can be self-defeating in itself.

Oh, the perils of planning the planner.

How have you overcome your yearly planning task? What planners have best helped you? Do you even use a planner?

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