Inch by inch, word by word

Most mornings of the week my work day starts with a writing session shared with a group of writers spread out across the globe. After the session, we check in and share what we worked on, our struggles, and our joys. The other morning I shared that I had tried to talk myself out of writing from the moment I woke up, but I got my butt in the chair, did a little bit of work, and I took that for a win.

Some days are like that, and when you string together a long strand of days where the work feels tedious, that can wear on your brain. That’s where I’m at with my current second draft. I’m so deep it’s hard to see the big picture - of the story and writing life.

I’m turning to my knitting often throughout the day. I’ll sit for pockets of time with various projects, letting the yarn run through my fingers as the needles click and the project at hand grows. There’s a satisfaction in seeing the stitches add up to a whole, in the growth of a sweater, inch by inch, stitch by stitch.

At certain points of writing a novel you get that same sense of satisfaction - at the end of a chapter or seeing your work printed out, feeling the heft of pages in your hands. But ultimately, knitting is a more immediate gratification, even if the project isn’t complete in a day, you can see measurable progress.

That’s what this is about, I think. Measurable progress. In a first draft, it’s easy - you count your words each day and tally them up nicely and neatly in an organized fashion. In a second draft, you have to shift your ideas of what’s a measurable goal. Is it time? Is it words added to the draft? What about when you backtrack and fix something out of order? What about… what about… what about…

I ask myself that a lot right now. And more often than not I’m finding I don’t have the answers. The only one that I have consistently is to sit down and not try to figure it out - instead, try to feel it out. Maybe measurement isn’t for this draft so much as movement. Maybe I can let the words and paragraphs slip through my fingers, swooping my pen or keyboard in and around them like knitting needles do with yarn. The all-important tension a knitter holds their yarn with is like the consistency of a writer who shows up day after day for the work.

I finished up a sweater the other week, bound off the edges and wove in the ends. I soaked the garment in a bath of tepid water and suds, the stitches relaxed and softened, the sweater had to become something almost unrecognizable in that water in order to get it to the shape it was meant to be. I gently wrung the water out and squished it between two towels to take away the excess water, and then laid it out to dry. Slowly the water evaporated, the stitches plumped, the wool softened. And when I slipped the dried and blocked sweater over my head, I sighed with pleasure feeling the wool against my skin and the sweater hugged my form in just the right way.

Each moment spent with each stitch was worth it in the end. Just as each moment spent with each word will be worth it in the end, too.

Unhelpful Companions

If I were to write a story about this summer, Humidity would be the antagonist. In the beginning, he might seem innocuous, a gentle reminder to slow down, maybe you would think he had your best interest at heart. And then as the story went on, he’d thicken his presence and pepper the days as sweat on your brow, condensation on your cup. Nothing more than a nuisance, still tolerable. The story would build and the climax would come when you realized what was holding you back was actually Humidity. He was behind the stiffness in your step, the ache of your joints. He was to thank for the feeling of general malaise towards the three-quarter mark of the season, causing you to crawl through the count down to autumn. In the end, just as you were gaining strength to fight him off, he’d vanish into the newly cooled and dry air. The epilogue would be dated the following June, just at the point where you feel a hint of stickiness in the air, and find yourself grateful for the opportunity to slow down and savor the long summer days…

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The shift in seasons is one of my favorite things about living in New England.

We’ve been in our house now for a full cycle of seasons. We’ve seen the hay fields through maturing to harvesting, snow-covered and dormant to youthful in spring. We settled in through the fall, made it through our first Maine winter by staying cozy near the woodstove, planted our own seeds in the spring, and are enjoying the fruits of our labors this summer.

When we moved into our last home, over a decade ago, we knew it was going to be temporary. Of course, we thought we would only be there for a handful of years, which turned into ten. For at least the last six years we lived in our rental home we had our eyes set on the next move. The Next Move, like Humidity in the summertime, was a constant companion. It settled in our minds, lingered in corners, and was on the tip of our tongues, an often unasked question.

The answer finally came in a situation that we couldn’t even fathom at the time, and we’re just starting to fully grasp it now, a year on. We live on over thirty acres of land, which we share with my parents who also live on the property, in a house a stone’s throw away from ours. It’s a place where one can wander for hours, exploring not just hay fields but woods and trails, as well as a meandering river. Just yesterday we went for a walk and saw a deer grazing in our hay fields. It raised its head, acknowledging our presence, and then went back to its morning meal. We’ve spent a set of seasons knee-deep in learning about this place, our home, only to learn that we’ll spend the rest of our time here learning… growing… becoming.

Somewhere within the last year, it’s started to sink in - we’re not focused on The Next Move. It’s a strange feeling after a life of moving {or planning a move} every few years, to be settled. To not have The Next Move on the horizon. To simply allow yourself to be.

For so long I put countless things on hold, things I’d do “after The Next Move.” Well, it’s after. And it’s time.

Truthfully, waiting for The Next Move was always a bit of a comfort for me, like a safety blanket. I know I need to be careful not to shift from The Next Move to The Next Thing, and instead put The Next- to rest. Not to wait on something to do the things we’ve dreamed of, to finish writing the books I have in progress, and build the writing career I’ve talked about for years.

It’s time to take advantage of the fact that now is the time to create the life I’ve been waiting to live. The humidity is about to go poof, The Next Move is gone quite possibly forever, and everything that’s been just out of reach is now sitting at my doorstep… waiting for me to answer the doorbell.

Do you hear it, too?

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FYI: I’ll be writing here the second and fourth Tuesdays of the month. It’s a bit of an experiment, as I’m unsure of how I want to use this space… maybe for journal type entries, maybe playing with some short fiction… however it turns out, I’m so glad to have you along for the ride. Thank you for being here, and for reading my words.

On Writing Rhythms

Monday morning. The air feels thick with summer. I turn on my computer, open Scrivener, and log on to video call with the women I write with most mornings during the week. It’s about accountability, camaraderie, support, laughter, and oh yeah… words.

I joined the group - it’s titled The Confident Creative Club, and is run by the creative force that is Helen Redfern - earlier in the year. Without a doubt, it’s been the best decision I’ve made for my writing life in a long, long time. While there’s many facets to the group, my favorite are the live writing sessions. We show up just as we are, from all corners of the world, and put our microphones on mute and write, together but separately. At the end of the hour we touch base and see we each got on with our writing.

There’s power in showing up with others with the shared intention of writing.

Even with that, some mornings are harder than others. Recently I’ve been so focused on getting to the end of the draft I’m working on, that I’ve forgotten about the tricks and tools I use to get started on a draft during that period of time when you need as much inner and outer support as you can get to show up in the face of a blank page. The other week I pulled out all of my notebooks that I’d written in when I first had a glimmer of an idea, and reading through my scribbles reminded me of how I relied heavily on tarot cards {I used that as prompts when I feel stuck} and the rituals of putting on certain bracelets a friend of mine for me that represent my books and connection to creativity. They might seem like little things, but the few moments it takes to pull a card and to slip on those bracelets are what it takes to ground and center me. After that, I’ll refer to any notes I made the day before, take a deep breath, and start writing.

These days I’ve been camping out in my bedroom for the morning writing sessions, where it’s cool and quiet. The dog rests by my side, she nudges me for snuggles now and then which make for a welcome distraction, the fan whirs, and the curtains dance. During the winter months, it looks much the same, only I’m camped out by the fireplace, notebooks spread out on the couch beside me, but the dog is still at my feet.

That hour of time each day is sacred. It’s taken time for me to set boundaries around my writing time, to show up consistently, and even longer to take my writing seriously. I find that no matter what season it is, the more often I can start the day with some words and connect creatively with myself, the better the day will be.

The key to having a writing life is of course to write. But it’s also to recognize the seasonal changes within ourselves, our process, and our lives, and to shift accordingly. Rhythms and rituals, whether they’re showing up with others or simply slipping on a bracelet or two, can ease those shifts and remind us why we’re showing up in the first place. The tricky part is to remember they’re there to fall back on, even after we’ve been swept up in a story that carries us through the difficulty of getting to the page. When the energy falls, and fatigue sets in, it’s those rhythms and rituals that will carry us to the end of our drafts. Maybe they’ll actually get the place they deserve in the acknowledgment section of my next book…

Home, again

It’s been a while since I’ve written on a blog regularly. Over the last few years I’ve written thousands and thousands of words, but not in one place. I’ve thrown them up over on Instagram, have dabbled on Medium, have shared through my newsletter, and wrote endlessly on first drafts. I’ve felt fragmented through it all, longing for one place that could hold everything together.

Low and behold, a website can do just that. So here we are.

Welcome to this space, my new online home. It’s similar to my previous site, but to me it feels a little more grown up, sophisticated, and professional. You’ll find access to my newsletter (a sign up as well as links to previous letters), Instagram, my books, the podcast on creativity that I host with my brother, as well as contact forms all in a central hub. It feels like home.

Since last posting regularly, much has changed in my life. It’s been over two years since Farm Girl made it’s debut, a pandemic has riddled our daily lives, and my family and I moved north two hours into Maine. I hope to write about it all, including how life has changed so much, and yet so much remains the same. Where we live now holds greater opportunity to slow down and savor life, as we’re surrounded by hay fields, a meandering river, and woods a plenty. Things move a bit slower here. It’s a more physical existence than where we previously lived. From gathering wood from the woodshed on snow-covered mornings to gathering lettuce from the garden for our dinner to walking home noisily after seeing a coyote in the field while on a dog walk in the fields, it’s all part of a life we didn’t know we needed, or even wanted, until a year ago. Every bit of life informs the rest and noticing that is part of living a creative life. I can’t wait to share it all with you here.

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Thank you for spending time with me and my words…