A Rocky Start........

In the past few months I have been gearing up to make 2013 a year of writing.  I have several projects in various stages.  This year I have to finish something and attempt to publish it.   That is the goal.   In order to keep on track I have set up a schedule and added a few things that were meant to help out.  Setting time on my calendar was the easy part.  I have at least two days per week that it is mandatory for me to write at least something.  I went to great lengths to create a writing space.  For the first time EVER, we have a spare room in our house.  With Nicholas on his own and no more exchange students there is a room that is designated as my writing office.   My boss helped me find the right writing desk.  I cleaned out and rearranged the space to make it friendly and functional.   I added a zillion pictures of my favorite people and my best memories.   I tacked up a few affirmations to remind me that I can do this!!   My friend Chris put together a computer for me that is for writing only.  The only other thing I am allowed to do is to use it for photo storage.  I have it so that it is in a quiet place and purposely don't have it set up to the Internet so I don't get distracted.   Antone bought me a nice Ipod dock for Christmas so I can quietly play my music when I need inspiration--everything was coming together.  Today was the first day that I planned to write in there.   I loaded all of my writing projects onto a memory stick, loaded them into the computer and got ready to get down to business.   Damn I hate being computer illiterate.   All of my files were saved in the 2007 version of Word.  The writing computer does not have that version.  It isn't on the Internet so I couldn't download a newer version of word.  If I had any energy left, I could have came back to my main computer,  re saved everything in a Word version that would work and reloaded it back onto the writing computer.  That was just too much for me today.   Instead I shut the computer down, turned out the lights in the writing room and came back to my comfortable computer.  Of course I am not working on the novel, I am too busy blogging, working on the look of my blog, building a Facebook page for my blog posts and ignoring my novel.  It will still be there tomorrow when I have more energy.

Speaking of tomorrow, tomorrow is Wednesday.  What is so special about Wednesday? In order to keep myself on track this year I signed up for a Women's Writing group that meets on Wednesdays from 12-2.  Two different friends read about it and thought it would be a great place for me to meet other writers, share ideas and get inspiration.  It seemed perfect.  Last week was my first class.  I walked in with high hopes.   It turned out that my vision of what I want in a writing group and what this writing group actually is don't line up.   I am tempted to stay home and write tomorrow during the time I should be in class.  The class is something you sign up for through CCC, but you don't actually pay for it.  Since it is free, it shouldn't matter if I never show up again.  Fortunately or unfortunately, whichever way you want to look at it, I have got to go back and give it a chance.  What I hoped for was a group of like minded women who talked about what they were writing, shared some knowledge about getting published, working through writer's block and anything else that would be helpful.  Instead I was intimidated by a group of academic women who all seemed to know one another well and got right down to business.   We did go around the room and say our names and what we like to write.   There were 15-20 women, most of who are older than me, who were very comfortable there.  The group has been meeting for the past 17 years and some of them have been there all along.   Since these women had been going, they knew what was expected of them.  The ones who wanted to share each brought several copies of something they were working on.  Each woman gets only a short amount of time, so if they are writing a novel they only bring 3-4 pages.   They read their work and afterwards there is a brief discussion, you write down your comments on the copy you were given to read along with and you hand it back to the writer.  

Did I mention these women are academics?  The novel that I am the furthest along on is a murder mystery that is a pretty light and easy read.  It could be viewed as Chick Lit.  Most of these women were writing things more serious in nature and were good at what they are doing.   Two of the women are writing memoirs and they are memoirs worth reading.  The first is married to a man who knew Amelia Earhart.  He has firsthand knowledge of one of the most amazing women in history who happened to have disappeared mysteriously.   People are intrigued by Amelia Earhart.   The second memoir is by a woman who was a nun for several years when she was young.  It is about leaving the convent and making her way into the world.   How does one follow that? There were several blurbs from different writers,  all made me feel silly and school girlish.   How is my small town kindergarten teacher going to compete?  Okay, I know, she doesn't have to.  They are writing one kind of book and I am writing a whole different kind.  Does my book belong in a group of academic women?  I'm not sure.  Maybe I should work on that one quietly at home and take a different project to the CCC group.   I will need to decide.  Thankfully there isn't time for everyone to read and not everyone wants to.  It is okay if I choose to sit quietly among these women and observe.  Maybe I will learn something, maybe I will just pretend to be listening and let my mind wander.   I am so damn good at daydreaming.  I have two hours to kill, I am not looking for a grade, I have no homework, I may as well see where this little adventure takes me.   The term is 12 weeks.  Can I make it all the way through?  That remains to be seen.  For now I will commit to three weeks and see how I feel after the third class.  

In the meantime I plan to put together a small group of my own.  A group of like minded ladies who will brainstorm, share ideas and possibly even work on a few projects together as we cheer one another on in our personal projects.   We can kindly give suggestions, redirect stories that are hitting a dead end and find our own cures for writer's block.