One of my favorite parts of the Brandon Sanderson fandom is his yearly State of the Sanderson post, which gives an overview of his year and sets out what projects he’s working on next. So I decided I should start doing my own. I haven’t yet come up with a clever alliterative title using my last name, so for now, Writer in Review it is.
And yes, it’s February and I’m writing a year in a review post. I blame omicron. Hopefully in future years I can post these on my birthday in January instead.
Here’s what the life of astronaut Chris Hadfield can teach writers.
This week I had a chance to re-listen to a favorite of mine, An Astronaut’s Guide to Life on Earth by Chris Hadfield. One of my book clubs chose to read this one at my suggestion, and I’m so glad they did. Chris Hadfield is the astronaut you might recognize from his viral music video from the ISS or any of his great educational YouTube videos on the everyday life of astronauts. I find Chris’s writing delightful, his life fascinating, and his insights to life spot on.
This time through, I read the book with an eye towards how his advice could apply to a writing career. As you probably know, I’ve been a stay-at-home mom for over a decade. Now that my youngest child is in kindergarten, I’ve started to think more often about what I want to be when I grow up. I know I want to do something with words, but nailing that dream down can be hard.
This is where Hadfield’s advice comes in. Here’s what the life of an astronaut can teach writers:
Continue reading “4 Writing Lessons from an Astronaut”I have a friend who struggles a lot with mental health issues. Recently, her therapist has mandated working on her sleep health (going to bed at a reasonable time, not using screens in bed, not sleeping during the day, etc). She was sort-of-pretend complaining on a Zoom call the other day about how she was “being mean to herself” by forcing herself to skip her typical three hour afternoon nap. I think she knew inside herself that it was necessary to skip afternoon naps in order to be able to get a full night’s sleep. But she still felt like not taking a nap was “mean.”
This conversation gets at the problem of the whole “self care” movement. The definition of caring for ourselves can mean different things to different people at different times. Sometimes a nap is self-care, sometimes it’s not. If you are occasionally exhausted, allowing yourself a break for a short nap is a kind and productive thing to do. But if you chronically stay up late and have trouble sleeping and end up crashing for three hours in the afternoon, then a nap becomes something unhealthy, a bad habit to break. How do we make sense of this?
Continue reading “Self Care and The Three Selves”Well hello again.
Like many others, my writing productivity has suffered during the pandemic. I went from having mornings free of kids to pursue my writing (and physical therapy) to suddenly supervising four kids learning at home. (Stop me if you’ve heard this one.) It was stressful and many times it was all I could do to get the kids through their school work in the morning and spend the rest of the day on the couch, obsessively reading Google News and Facebook.
After a month or two, I started building a foundation that allowed me to come out of hibernation. Honestly, I was forced to. I had agreed in February to write a blog post due in June, and my deadline was fast approaching. I had to find some way to come out of my funk and get some kind of work done.
Continue reading “Finding Motivation to Write During Hard Times with 4thewords”I’m a huge New Year’s resolution maker. Actually, scratch that. I’m a huge all-the-time resolution maker. I absolutely love self-improvement and making plans for change. Following through on them, I’m not always as good at, but by aiming for the moon, I’ve often grabbed a few stars.
I’m pulling ideas from a couple different places to set my writing goals for the next few months. Digital Minimalism by Cal Newport suggested setting your goals on a roughly semester basis, which appeals to the school geek in me, so these Winter 2020 goals extend to May when I’ll select some summer semester projects. Atomic Habits by James Clear encouraged me to focus on the smallest possible unit of action: going small often makes a bigger difference than going big, which is always a temptation for a planner and goal setter like me. And I stole the three areas of my goals from DIY MFA, which suggested them as the benefits provided by an MFA program which you can replicate yourself without the expense of tuition.
So without further ado, my Winter 2020 writing plan:
Continue reading “Winter 2020 Writer Goals & Habits”