Visit with Kij

[pegkerr]

kijjohnson came up to the Cities today, and so instead of our usual Sunday noon call, we had a nice two or three hour visit. She brought her dog Hope along, and the girls enjoyed meeting her. We walked up to the corner coffeeshop and bought iced coffee for Kij and me and ice cream for the girls, and then walked back home. Kij and I sat on the porch and just talked, about our lives and changes we're trying to make (and changes we want to make that we can't quite figure out). We also talked about our respective books.

I talked about how I've sort of set the ice palace book aside and was finding it difficult to get back to it. I'd stopped because I went back to work full time and so lost my designated writing time. And then I started feeling uneasy about this and that about the plot, and started feeling remote from the characters, and days without writing has stretched into several weeks. "I've come to think that being a professional writer is like being a professional ballet dancer," Kij told me. "Even if you're a pro and have a lot of experience, you have to do your classes every day, because you have to keep your body in tiptop form, just so that when you do it, you can make it look effortless. It isn't like going out dancing at the club once a week, where you dance because you feel like it once in a while."

*sigh* You know what you have to do, Peg. Just like what you have to do with the exercise program that you stopped and you're finding excuses not to start up again.

You just have to buckle down to do it.

Anyway, we talked about ideas about what I can pick up to write again. Will mull over the next few days, and then . . . well, no promises. We'll see.

Comments

[bordergold.livejournal.com]

<33333333 Good luck!

[minnehaha.livejournal.com]

Well, you lost your writing time because you have summer day-care issues, so why isn't it easy to look forward to school resuming and then finding a way to get your writing time back?

K.

[oracne.livejournal.com]

This might sound like AA or Weight Watchers or something but--

people out here care about your struggles!

[1crowdedhour.livejournal.com]

>>You just have to buckle down to do it.<<

Ah, but that buckling can take its toll.

Let me know when another writing meet is in order.


Caroline

[fangexploring.livejournal.com]

Hope you get back to it and enjoy it as well!

Ken

[demarazare.livejournal.com]

That is really a really encouraging conversation/analogy... I was really waffling on a project of my own for while, and still trying to kick myself into gear again. Thanks for sharing. :)

I think every long project hits a spot like this, where you don't want to do it anymore, where everything feels wrong, where you hate it and think it's awful. But I really enjoyed what work of yours I have read, and I don't believe that this current project is of any less quality. You'll do great. You just need to get on with it. Good luck!

[kerri]

Hmm. You have no idea how much I actually identify with some of what you said up there. Of course, I'm not a published author, but for me it's finishing the stuff that I *do* write, always with the thought in the back of my head that maybe someday I *will* have my own book on shelves out there. I'll start things and then go days or weeks without continuing work on them - and the longer I have a break, the harder it is to start again, and the worse I feel about my abilities and such.

So - good luck with it, Peg - just remember that you have us out here thinking of you and rooting for you as well!

[red-queen.livejournal.com]

I forget who it was who said that writing was the art of applying the seat of the pants to the seat of the chair. My own favorite is: Writing is easy. First, you clean behind the refrigerator...

Seriously, I'm a tech writer and sometimes-other-stuff-writer, and it's no joke: I struggle constantly with a desire to do ANYTHING but write. I have a pile of story/poem ideas about which I've done *nothing*, sort of waiting for that perfectly inspired moment. And yet I know --from experience -- that just putting words down on screen or page on a daily basis makes a difference. Sooner or later, you'll have pieces that can become a whole. Or put another way, the infinite number of monkeys in your mind will write SOMETHING. :-}

Go easier on yourself, tho' -- find a way to make a regular writing time something to look forward to, rather than a dreary buckling-down (says she who also struggles for self-discipline and structure against her rebellious, spoiled inner child). Maybe every day will be hard to manage, but a time slot every day that gets used for working out body or words...?