Opening an old notebook…

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bluebell…I found this quote, written down when I was in New York at my retreat:

“If you treat people the way they are, you make them worse. If you treat them the way they ought to be, you make them capable of becoming what they ought to be.” –Goethe

I know who I was no doubt thinking of when I jotted this down. But what if we treated OURSELVES as the people we ought to be, the people we know we are capable of becoming? Today I’m going to treat myself as the happy genius of my household, the famously productive writer, Bethany Reid.

 

Thank you and goodbye…to the boot

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Since breaking my ankle on March 9, I have been wearing an orthopedic boot. Today, I was allowed to take the damn thing off — for good! The break in the fibula is healed. The injury to the talus (or talar dome) is healing and doesn’t need the boot any longer. I’m supposed to take it easy, put my foot up when I can, take Ibuprofen and use ice at the end of the day…oh, and go slow in getting back at the gym. Thank you, boot, for the help, but I will no longer be requiring your services.

On the novel, as of this morning, 6,619 words.  (Thank you, broken ankle, for slowing me down and helping me to finish PEARL’S ALCHEMY and start something new. But I will no longer be requiring your services.)

Progress on all fronts.

Advice to Writers – You’re A Boxer

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You’re a boxer. Your job is to get punched in the face and keep swinging. It’s easy for anybody to say, “I wrote five scripts. None of them sold. I gave it my best shot. I’m moving back to Chicago.” You can’t do that. If you want a career in Hollywood, you can’t fail. You can quit, which most people do when they don’t achieve success as quickly as they’d like, but you can’t fail. There are as many opportunities as you can create for yourself. You can write a script a day, every day, for your whole life, if you’re that motivated.

ADAM RIFKIN (Quote reblogged from AdviceToWriters – Advice to Writers – You’re A Boxer.)

stubborn little me, at three

This quote touched a nerve for me. Many years ago I wanted a child and had pretty much exhausted all attempts to have one the usual way. Then infertility treatment failed. At least, what we could afford to pursue failed. My husband is older than I am and we weren’t eligible for adoption agencies. Then I learned about private adoption. Then our first adoption failed, at the hospital. Devastating.

But this is what I realized: I couldn’t fail. I was not willing to give up being a mother. “Not in this lifetime maybe,” a friend counseled me. I got mad. Bullshit, I thought. In this lifetime! We put our hearts out there again, and our oldest daughters, twins, appeared. Six years later, their sister showed up.

My daughters may drive me crazy (some days), but I never regret being their mom.

That’s how I’m going to pursue this writing gig, this new, full-time writing gig. I can’t fail.  “There are as many opportunities as you can create for yourself.”

Hopeless and Helpless

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image from www.exchangewire.com

I have now written a little more than 4000 words into my new novel. I’m still floundering around, checking out the territory and the voice and the point of view, exploring the characters. The main character, a woman stuck in an unhappy marriage, hasn’t admitted to herself  that she’s unhappy, that she’s more unhappy that she can stand. She’s telling herself that this is just life and she can’t expect more.

I’ve been thinking about how my process — how the writer’s process early in the drafting stage — is a little like a character’s process early in a novel. We’re hopeless and helpless. Even if we’ve planned ahead, even if we know the ending, early in the process we can’t really be sure that it’s working, that it will work and be worth all the work we are willing to put into it. All the steps of the hero’s journey or whatever other template we’re using is all out in front of us and, like the hero, we haven’t really gotten started yet.

I’ve been thinking about how life can be like this. In a novel, the character has about 20 pages, maybe 50, to be stuck in this phase, the hopeless and helpless phase, after which they have to shake themselves off and get started on their quest…or whatever it is they have ahead of them. In life, however, we get stuck (not just writers). We spend months feeling hopeless and helpless. Or years. Decades. We’d like to change our lives, but, geez, it’s just not possible.  We think it’s just not possible.

If your life were a novel, your readers would sigh and close the book. They would go looking for a different book.  You should do them a favor and and give them a different book. Get up, shake yourself off.  Get started on your quest.