The joys of editing

I was editing a magazine today and learned a new word. It's a beautiful little collection of letters and is almost onomatopoeic. I will have to find some story to use it in soon lest I forget it. It actually makes me excited about doing some writing tomorrow morning. Maybe I have stumbled across a new strategy for kickstarting writing.

 

The bizarre in the everyday

The final project for one of my writing classes requires us to each contribute to a zine. We agreed that the theme of the publication would be either the extraordinary or the bizarre. The first part will be about strange things we see in our everyday life; the second part will be about fantastical creatures. I need to write about 200 words for the first section. To this end I've been noting down unusual sights.
Over the last 24 hours I've seen:

• a dentist chair accompanied by an overhead light in the window of a normal looking block of apartments.
• a hasidic Jewish man riding a scooter down the sidewalk.
• a tea cup shaped fascinator in a store window.

I apologise for the poor quality;
I took it on the run.

The neglected sibling

Over the past week or so I've been devoting a lot more time and energy on my Twitter posts than I have been on these blogs. I've been spending time publishing a short story in snippets on Twitter (#shortstory or #thescarf). I initially did it to relieve the frustration of waiting for magazine articles I've written to be published. It accomplished that, but there were other unforeseen benefits. It's made me more sensitive to the impact of each sentence as a stand-alone unit. It's also made me more aware of the length and nuance of words. In some tweets I had to make sure I used shorter words that still carried an impact in order to stay within the 140 character limit. I'm also better at identifying superfluous words in sentences now. I think I will tweeterise another story soon.

Writerly angst

I'm feeling discouraged as a writer. It's frustrating waiting on editors to publish articles they commissioned and waiting on judges to deliberate on competition entries. I feel like I've put lots of writing and energy out there and I'm getting almost nothing in return. I can't say completely nothing because I did have some lovely comments from a friend who read my website for the first time, which is nice. However, it doesn't get me closer to being a proper, published, professional writer.
I know there were times in my early teaching career when I questioned my choice of profession and persistence to get through that initial unstable phase. At those times I had a series of strategies to help me stay the course. Now I need to come up with similar mechanisms for writing.
So I'm going to a weekend write-in with my writing group; I could browse through inspirational articles on my local writer's centre's website; maybe I'll talk to my writing group or class about my feelings – I wouldn't normally, but I'm trying to be less reserved. I could get a writing book out of the library to recharge my passion. I don't know whether I should write through these negative, self-doubting feelings. Should I keep writing until I find the wonderful, recuperating flow space that writing usually taps into or should I put aside writing for a while?
Since I'm not having a problem with not loving writing still or having writer's block, I'm not sure if the above strategies will change anything. I'm mostly struggling with the industry – the difficulty and slow pace of being published.
I've always found logical, natural consequences and motivations to be effective so maybe I should self-publish something just to feel like there's been progress.

Life Lesson

I learned a life lesson today which I want to share. If I share it I may remember it better and perhaps someone else won't make the same mistake that I did. The lesson: don't throw out loner socks, you never know when you might find its mate again. The single purple-toed sock floating around the drawer got so annoying I threw it out. A few months later and I've recovered the mysterious missing sock, but now I know it'll be forever mismatched.

Bah, humbug!

While doing the grocery shopping today I saw the first bits of Christmas candy on the shelves. I'm torn between knowing that it's far too early to start thinking about Christmas and my inherent love of the Christmas/New Year season. I don't get excited for the commercial side of the holidays – the presents and the high level of alcohol consumption. I do enjoy the get-togethers with friends and family. I love that it's usually the start of proper, hot summery weather. I definitely don't complain about a few weeks off work. That being said, I'm enjoying the start of spring right now and not thinking at all about holiday arrangements. I don't know who, if anyone, is buying holiday candy at this point, but there should be a rule that stores have to wait until at least November before they can start inundating us with useless, unhealthy holiday items.

New book = new friends

I started a new book today and it feels a little like I'm getting to know some new friends. It's nice to watch their good-natured bickering; there are hints at past adventures which I'm sure I'll hear about in time; and there is a sense that something interesting is going to happen. So partly I'm grateful for books, libraries, authors, literacy all those wonderful things that make reading possible. Also, I'm hopeful that my stories will elicit similar feelings in my readers.