Conscious Writing

December’s end and the beginning of the New Year is traditionally the time we reflect back on what we’ve learned and achieved during the past year and imagine what we’d like to create in the new.

In the past, my habit has been to look back on the past year and think about what I didn’t achieve. I didn’t finish the novel. I didn’t redesign my website or start the podcast I have in mind. I didn’t lose weight or get buff. Other than making myself feel bad – which is both one of my toxic traits and one my best tricks – this isn’t a particularly productive habit.

That’s one reason I started my Sunday evening posts. Once a week I look back at what wasn’t terrible, whether that means a great book I read, a concert I attended, some good news, an accomplishment, or a pat on the back. This habit made me more conscious of what good happens in my life, even if things sometimes go awry or big projects remain incomplete. During the week, I look for good things to write about, rather than waste time kicking myself for what didn’t go well.

Reflecting on 2023, I’m pleased – and more than a little shocked – that I kept my commitment to this blog and wrote at least once every day. I didn’t always have time to post every morning, but I wrote every day. This was a commitment I made to myself this year, and I kept it even when I didn’t feel like writing or wasn’t inspired. If you bothered to look back, you could probably spot the struggle days, but short posts count, and keeping my promise to myself mattered. The emotional gift was much greater than the sum of the writing.

For the first time in a long while, I feel like I’m closing out the year with some tangible accomplishments, even if I didn’t grab everything I wanted. I’ve incorporated my writing and creative work into my daily habits and made them a priority, which they haven’t been for some years now. Looking forward, I know I can adjust and incorporate new goals for the coming year. I’ve learned to be happy with the creative journey, without obsessing over the final result I desire. The result is still important, but if I’m not happy along the way, what’s the point of the trip?

I plan to continue blogging every day in 2024, though I’ll switch up what I write about. This year, I relied on A Year of Living Consciously to prompt ideas about writing and general creativity. Now that I’m nearing Day 365, I don’t need that crutch. I’ll still blog about writing and creativity and may turn to the lessons in the book for some inspiration, but these past 12 months have helped me develop a focus for the blog and the confidence that I have something interesting to say once in a while. Now that I fulfilled my one-year commitment to blogging the daily exercises, I’m free to explore some other topics.

I’ll keep up the Sunday gratitudes because that’s healthy and my Tuesday horoscope because it’s fun, but in between look for some deeper dives into writing topics and book discussions.

Let’s see where this takes us.

In today’s exercise in A Year of Living Consciously, Gay Hendricks shares an anecdote shared by his niece, Laura. When her oldest son was four, he collected rocks, plain old stones you’d find in any yard, wood, or trail. One day, Laura tossed the lot into the garbage, not realizing their importance to her four-year old. Thankfully, she was able to salvage the rocks from the trash without his knowing, and then spent time with him as he pointed out what made each small stone special to him.

I used to collect rocks as a kid, too. Our home had a gravel drive, so not any grey stone would do. I loved finding stones of different colors, especially those that were mottled or marbled, streaked with reds or yellows or multiple shades of brown. I collected big rocks and small, those that were craggy and rough and those that had been worn supernaturally smooth.

As an adult, I had another small collection, rocks I’ve picked up on my travels, in England and Ireland and other places. I had a stone too where I hid my heart, but that’s a story for another time.

Today, if you’re able, spend some time outside viewing the world as you did when you were a child. Pick some natural element – stones, trees, leaves, flowers, or some kind of greenery – and make note of their varying details. See how many difference sizes, shapes, textures, and shades you can identify. Write these down so that you remember what you saw the next time you need to describe a stone in the road or blades of grass or a special bloom in your writing. Treat yourself to an hour viewing the world with a child’s sense of wonder.

One of the lessons I’ve hoped to learn through this blogging year is perspective. Successes are fleeting. Setbacks are not permanent. Worry is a useless habit.

I am striving to recognize the small things, so I can let them go. I’m working on picking better battles. I’m learning to recognize when an objective serves my ego or my soul. I’m not especially good at any of these things but I’m getting better.

What does this mean for me creatively?

I’ve learned that writing goals are only worthwhile to the extent they serve my happiness. Writing 2 hours every day sound reasonable, but not when I use the goal as a cudgel on myself when I don’t make it. I finally caught COVID a few weeks ago, which blew up my December writing plans. I would rather have avoided it, but I chugged Nyquil and watched crappy movies with zero guilt.

When goals cease to work, they need to change. In the past, word count goals served me fairly well, but now, writing a solid 200 words in thirty minutes is more fulfilling than forcing myself sit for 2 hours to type 1000 words that I’ll never use anywhere. Last year, I started tracking the time in my seat, focusing on creating quality work rather than hitting an arbitrary number of words. I’m not sure how I’ll keep myself on track in 2024. My other methods served me when I needed them, but it’s ok to switch it up.

My creative needs have also changed as I’ve gotten older. When I was a kid, I wanted to be a famous writer. I dreamed of writing books that sold well enough to let me earn my living creatively. When I was older, making a lot of money didn’t matter as much, but I still craved the validation of being published.

These days, neither of those are important to me. I still want to hold books in my hand, but I no longer need anyone else’s approval of what I write. I may publish traditionally someday, but I’m not counting on it nor spending a lot of effort pursuing it. When I do publish, I’d like to sell a few books, but again, not a priority. If my books pay earn enough to pay for my website and the costs of design and printing, that would be satisfactory. If it turned into a side income during my retirement, that would be a bonus. But I’m not relying on my creative work to provide my living. At the moment, I’m not in a position where I’d have to turn what I do for love into a grind. I hope to keep it that way. If that means I never write a bestseller or buy a fancy house or win an award, so be it.

The only reason I ever wanted them in my youth was due to what else I lacked. I’ve found and healed a lot of those missing pieces over the years, and discovered that the work is more joyful the less I expect any outside reward.

I’m late to the lesson, but if I can spend the next 30 years living closer to the moment and engaging in fulfilling creative work, that wouldn’t be a bad thing.

Today is a day of giving and receiving gifts, and though we often focus on having the newest, the biggest, and the best of something, we acknowledge that the most important gifts in life are intangible: time, love, attention, respect, encouragement, friendship, security.

Our creativity is another intangible gift that we cannot live without. I’m grateful for mine, and I hope you appreciate and celebrate yours today and throughout the year.

Throughout the year, and especially over the last few days as the year draws to a close, I’ve been writing about finding a sense of ourselves and our place in the creative world.

Finding this place requires that we resist competing with and comparing ourselves to other creative people and their journeys and successes. It’s an easy trap to fall into. Who wouldn’t want to be as prolific and acclaimed as Joyce Carol Oates? Wouldn’t it have been great if our parents had formed a company for the sole purpose of publishing the first novel we wrote when we were 15 and then sent us on tour to promote it? I might wish I had 100,000 Instagram followers to feed my ego. I don’t write screenplays, but I’d be a lovely Oscar winner.

Comparing and contrasting is one of my toxic traits. Some writers have gifts of talent, time, and support I can only envy from a distance. And I don’t mean polite, quiet envy, but blood-curdling, apple-poisoning, ride the dragon into King’s Landing-level jealousy that may come off a tad unhinged if I spoke of it aloud.

At the same time, I regret to admit I look down on a lot of writers who put out work I consider shoddy. Looking at the free e-books available for download from Amazon is almost enough to make me quit writing out of sheer shame at the association.

But ultimately, we are neither more than nor less than any other writer. We bring forth what we have or we don’t. That’s it. No matter who I admire or disdain, that writer cannot write what I write, because that writer is not me. While our circumstances may be different and our challenges unequal, at heart every writer faces the same choice: to bring forth what is inside you or not. If what’s inside you is Reverse-Harem Hentai Alien Polycule Book XIV, well, ok.

In the end, publishing doesn’t matter. Sales don’t matter. Readers and critics don’t matter. The people who want to bully us away from certain stories or shame us for not writing to their desires don’t matter.

Joy matters. Having fun matters. Your journey through whatever we call this mess matters. Each of us is making our way from A to Z, and if along the way, you let out what’s inside you, that’s all you need. We’re all in the same river and we should enjoy being part of it.

If you’ve been reading this blog the past year, I don’t have to tell you about the importance of fostering creativity in your life. I’m pretty sure most of my readers are also writers – bloggers, memoirists, novelists, and storytellers.

While embracing your creativity, don’t forget to let it loose as well. Cultivate the habit of running with your craziest ideas, even if they seem unworkable or impossible to bring to light.

Go wild once in a while. Brainstorm your craziest notions. You may not be able to use your wildest ideas, but the freedom to think with abandon may bring you to other thoughts, connections, and ideas that you can realize. Don’t hold back.

Throughout the year, I’ve focused on the positive elements of creativity – our motivations, the sense of fulfillment and accomplishment, and the people who support and inspire us. Though I don’t like to dwell on them, I’ve also written about the people who drag us down. Whether it’s family or online critics, friends or writing peers, there always seems to be a Debbie Downer in the mix. Someone – intentionally or not – will always try to make you feel weird about what you love.

I still struggle with this, despite myself. I like reading and writing in a variety of genres, including what you might call “literary”, but I still find it hard to admit to enjoying comics and space opera and Dungeons and Dragons. I’d never call them guilty pleasures, because guilt is not an emotion I indulge, but I’m more likely to acknowledge that I read Frank O’Hara or Joyce Carol Oates before Philip K. Dick or Harvey Pekar.

Let’s dump that energy in the New Year. Your work is not for other people. Your work is for you. Maybe my D&D friends wouldn’t like my family drama and maybe my other friends wouldn’t be interested in my space epic, but I like them both, and that’s all that matters.

Today, think of someone who drags you down or inhibits you in some way. It might be someone who criticizes you or a fellow writer who is constantly in despair or disarray. Maybe there’s someone in your life who might think your interests are silly. Brainstorm what you might say to this person the next time you encounter their resistance. Think of something affirming but nonjudgmental, and practice saying it firmly and with the best intention. Even if you don’t get the chance to say it aloud, repeat your affirmation to yourself, as needed.

I’m a big believer in internal clocks and biorhythms. Technically, it’s pseudoscience, but I believe that humans are more in tune with the turnings of the heavens and earth than we realize. At its simplest level, we all have habits and preferences that influence our natural schedules.

Unfortunately, the world rarely takes these rhythms into account. I’ve read studies purporting to show that most teenager would function better in school if they were allowed to stay up later and sleep in until mid-morning, with school hours adjusted accordingly. Does the world care? It does not. Instead, we force kids to get up at 6 or 7 and begin classes when some science suggests they’d be better off asleep. The working world is equally unforgiving. No one ever asked me what time I’d prefer to work.

Most likely, you fall into your natural rhythms when your time is your own, on weekends or on vacation, or after you retire. As a believer in our internal rhythms, I think it’s important to recognize our energy and sleep cycles, so that we can time our creative work to the hours when we’ll be most productive.

I’m an early to bed person. I hit the wall at about 10 o’clock, and that’s not an age thing. Even in college, 10ish was my optimal bedtime. If I were going out with friends, I had to push back the 10 o’clock hour to get my second wind. It still happens. I’m perfectly capable of staying up past 10, but if I do, I have a hard time falling asleep later, and it wrecks my sleep cycle, because I still wake up at the same time in the morning. Optimally, my wind-down time coincides with my internal clock. My watch agrees. If I hit the hay before 10, I’m more likely to get a solid eight hours of sleep. Any later and I toss and turn, lucky to get six hours.

I used to do my best creative work first thing in the morning. I’d get up at five and write for 2-ish hours before having to go to work. However, the older I get, the more wakeup time I need in the morning. I’m not real productive right away. On the weekends, noon to five are my prime writing hours. I try to force it sometimes, but I’m low productivity early in the morning. Based on some manual time tracking, I’m also least productive on Wednesdays and Thursdays, so those have become good nights for research and reading.

When do you do your best work? What times would you prefer to go to bed or get up? Do you work with your rhythms or against them?

The latest trendy internet insult disguised as advice is “Go out and touch some grass.” This is usually directed as someone prone to sharing conspiracy theories (left or right) or who worries way too much about the feelings and activities of fictional characters or who thinks having purple hair and septum piercing are equivalent to having a personality. Rarely uttered in good faith, this advice generally means you need to start agreeing with whatever the advice giver agrees with, and if you don’t, your lack of grass-touching is evidence that you are emotionally stunted and perhaps unhinged.

On the other hand, it’s also good advice. There’s a reason moms and doctors recommend fresh air and direct sunlight. Science agrees that touching earth is good for our spirits, whether we prefer the beach or the woods, the mountains or the fields.

This week’s forecast for Aquarians agrees, urging us to spend some time in nature. Rob Brezsny promises that we will have no dangerous encounters, that we’ll learn a lot, and that our spiritual lives will thrive.

I wish he hadn’t given this advice in December in Maryland. I can’t learn anything when it’s this cold and dark.

Whether we like them or not – or even know them – everyone is born into a family. Maybe mom or dad didn’t stick around, but you had one of each. Most of us, even those lucky enough to be born into a relatively happy family, also incorporate acquired family members into our circle.

Found family may include a loving adult or role model in your life, your best friends, a special co-worker, an ex you don’t hate, or other people you find at your church, in your neighborhood, or through your hobbies and interests. These days, our found families include people we meet online, many of whom we’ve never met in real life.

Do your protagonists have found family? What roles do these acquired family members fill? How did they meet? What do found family members provide that your hero can’t get at home?