MindScribing

Hello. I’m still here.

I plan on returning to this blog in the near future, but for now, it’s going to have to go on the back burner. We’re relocating to another state in the next few months, so I’ve been busy house-hunting, loan-qualifying and all those other fun things you have to do when you move somewhere that you no absolutely nothing about.

My writing has been put aside until we have our lives back in order, and MindScribing will have to be on hiatus until then. I hope to see you back here when I get back on my feet.

~Diane

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Hello, readers!

I’m moving MindScribing from TypePad to WordPress…and didn’t realize the work it involved! Well, I’m halfway through here and I know this place is a mess. I’m working as fast I can to get my site back up and looking normal…but please forgive me. I’ll have this place up and looking spiffy in no time, I promise!

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So last month when I was unexpectedly handed my pink slip late on a Friday afternoon, the first thing I did when I got home was fall apart. Then I realized it was a sign. I believe in signs, you see. Life has a way of showing if you’re going in the right direction or not. They’re road signs…stop…slow down…caution ahead. They’re everywhere, yet most people don’t notice them. I do. I see them, though like the speed limit signs on Highway 50 through Northern California, I tend to ignore them. That is, until I can’t possibly ignore them anymore, when life sends me careening smack-dab into one. WRONG WAY.

Losing a job is one of those signs that I’m heading in the wrong direction, and it might not necessarily mean that on a professional level. I once left a job that changed my life personally, for the better or the worse, depending on how you look at it. I was single, in the midst of a nervous breakdown, lonely and afraid. I was an adult, yet still living at home. Then life gave me the greatest gift it could that sent me on an entirely different path – parenthood. CURVES AHEAD.

Last month’s sign has taken some time for me to comprehend. Part of that is I’m still battling my INFP and INTP thinking vs. feeling struggle. It hurt, but it’s been for the best. I had only been at this job for about 9 months, necessitated by my husband’s promotion and a subsequent move 3 hours south of the place I’d called home since 2nd grade. It was the first job I applied for and so was in shock when only a month after moving I was working as a Paralegal in a government capacity. I loved it, and since this is what I had trained to do, it felt right, and permanent.

Still slowly, over the months I became more and more lost. Where was I? I loved my job, but I didn’t love me. I had stopped writing to make this move, and it didn’t feel right. I couldn’t be at home with my children any longer, and that didn’t feel right. My home was always a mess and my mind was even more cluttered. Life knew where I was…and where I was going…but I still didn’t see that it was about to send me on a detour ahead.

I’ve now learned that sometime very soon we’ll be moving once again, this time only a couple hours east, but into a neighboring state. Where are you taking me, life? Today I couldn’t handle the not knowing anymore. I’ve sat here quietly in my room trying to figure it out. I’m not the kind who can go through life without a plan. I try desperately to set something in stone, knowing that it never happens the ways it’s planned. Why I bother, I’m not sure, but it has something to do with being a control freak. There’s one thing I’ve learned about life – you’re never in control. Never.

I decided to do the one thing that always takes me back to where I belong – journaling. I’ve done it for years and it’s therapy for my soul. Here’s some of what I came up with:

I’m trying to push things into fruition when I should be sitting still and listening to life around me. I have forgotten who I am. Well that changes now. I’m going to find who I am, remembver why I’m here and I’m going to LOVE IT. I used to love myself and then I got lost. I got married, I had kids, I got lost in the details. What happened? Where did I go? Where was I hiding and what was I scared of? Just because I had to “grow up” doesn’t mean I had to completely disappear. Who said I couldn’t continue to be myself? I may have grown up, but I’m still me. I still love music, I still love singing out loud to it and dancing around in my living room. I still love spending time by myself and I still love long drives down back roads and long walks through historic cemetaries. I still love taking photographs of storm clouds in black and white and I still love watching movies that make me cry. I still love being lonely now and then. Welcome back, you. I’ve missed you.

I’ve learned it doesn’t matter where I go, where life takes me. I’m not going to be happy if I’m not me. If this means writing, then I’ll do it, even if it’s not the financially-rewarding choice. If this means taking time away from the kids now and again so I can rock out with my Zen, then so be it. If it means taking a drive by myself down Centerville the next time I’m home, I’m in. I need to fall in love with myself again, and I know only then I will no longer feel lost.

You see, it’s not the road I’m on that is confusing me, it’s who I’m taking along for the ride. All these years, it’s been a stranger. It’s time my husband and kids know who I really am…and I don’t mean the person who can burn soup. I’m the person who loves life, and all its experiences, including the trips it sends us on that are less than expected.

I am a person who is not lost on the road of life. I see the signs. I’ve seen them all, except one. REST STOP AHEAD. Do it. Take a break. Learn who you are, remember who you are and who you are traveling with. Do you still know that person? Do you still love him or her? Be the person you are and you’ll love the
trip you’re about to take…

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The other day I posted about why I don’t find professional blogging appealing. Okay, I used the word "hate," but really those who know me know I don’t mean that in the strongest sense of the word. There are things I love about blogging, but it just isn’t for me…and again, we’re talking about problogging here.

I have many friends who love to blog, and several who make most of their income doing it. I enjoy blogging for fun, to express myself when needed, and to generally keep in touch with others. I enjoy it most when I can let out a piece of myself that’s been simmering inside…when it’s something provocative…when it’s deep and philosophical. Those who have followed my previous blogs in years past know this to be true.

Anyway….

Why do you love to blog? For fun or professionally, I want to know - is it to teach? To learn? To make money? To meet others? What’s important to you?

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No, no,  no…by this I don’t mean I hate the very fact that I’m sitting here typing this for you to read. No, I mean I hate the kind of blogging one does for the sole purpose of making money. If you could break up blogging into two categories, fun blogging and problogging, I would be in the "fun" category. Nothing personal against probloggers, I am just not a blogger. I’m a writer, a writer who happens to blog. For fun.

I have to admit that when I began writing online some three years ago, it started with blogging. I was actually "discovered" on my personal blog Crazy Mom’s Journal (which is temporarily disabled until late June). From there I began content writing, keyword article writing, ghostwriting, and even published a few pieces in print.

It wasn’t until a couple years into my writing that I discovered that writers could make money blog writing. I remember thinking how fun that sounded - I can write what I want, when I want, and get paid for it?! It didn’t take long for me to realize how wrong I was, how much blogging was making me hate writing in general, and how much I longed for my traditional writing projects once again.

There are several reasons I’ll always just be a writer who happens to blog:

• I work extremely part-time, in the middle of the night usually. I also (mostly) don’t work weekends. (Only because I can afford to right now.)
• I do not have a Type A Personality. (I don’t know a problogger that doesn’t.)
• I’m still having and raising kids. (This is my full-time job until the last kid enters kindergarten, and I’m pretty sure the last kid hasn’t even been born yet.)
• I take only the projects that interest me, and produce terrible work when it’s not fun. (Bloggers often care more about their readers than themselves, and can write about almost anything.)
• I live on the West Coast and am not a morning person. (Meaning, my blog will never have extremely recent or first morning news for East-Coasters to read with their morning coffee.)
• I’m an introvert. (I hate socializing, though I did join Twitter and I will leave comments on blogs, but it’s not particularly fun for me to 100% join-in with blog communities. I hate marketing.)

I’m sure I can think of plenty more reasons, but those are reasons enough. Blogging for pay just isn’t for me. I’ll do it to network with other writers and socialize with friends and family, but the number one reason I blog - is for me.

I like to journal, express my thoughts and feelings, share information I’ve discovered… but I like to do it on my time, on my topics, on my blogging platform. (Which reminds me I should have added to the list that I hate WordPress and prefer TypePad. Sorry, but I do.)

So, take it or leave it… that is why I hate blogging. I love bloggers, however, and love reading your blogs, so please keep it up and keep sharing all the wonderful reads with all of us. (Truth is, I’m jealous you have the personality/schedule/brains/looks/etc. for it.)

I’ll be busy with my ghostwriting and perhaps some more print writing.

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I am the first to admit that I have trouble beginning new projects. I’m not sure if I’d call it procrastinating, but I tend to find reasons to put off my work for another day. Is that procrastinating? Oh darn.

The good news is that I now know what is causing this problem. The issue, as you might have guessed, is that I let fear paralyze me.

Fear of what, you ask? Well, as a writer there are many things to fear: failure, humility, rejection, loss of income. Oddly enough none of those are the reason for my writing hang-up. I’m afraid of starting, the simple task of actually putting the first sentence on my paper or on the screen via the keyboard.   

Why are the first words so difficult? Here’s where my faulty thinking takes me:   

• The beginning of the first paragraph dictates the direction of the entire piece. (If I start off sloppy, the entire piece will be sloppy.)   
• I’m afraid I don’t have all the research I need to write a complete and compelling piece. (Better surf the net some more.)   
• Nobody wants to hear what I have to say. (This is the blogger inferiority complex Darren Rowse of ProBlogger discussed recently.)   
• I will feel more inspired next hour, later tonight, tomorrow, what have you. (What’s going on in the Twitterverse?)

Some of you are wondering where the faulty thinking is…after all, the beginning of a document does set the tone for the entire piece, and we do need to have sufficient research to write. However, if you are a perfectionist like me, you tend to take things to the extreme and are a bit irrational. Okay, at times very irrational.   

Regardless of the cause of this fear, I have learned a few things about it, and how to squash it into the ground like a bug:   

• Just get started. Write that first sentence - you can always delete it. Take a journalistic lead and write out the most important thought in the first sentence…the rest will flow naturally. (I’ve proven this to myself time and time again.)   
• Do your research and stop when you’ve got enough information to write a book - before then is better, unless you are writing a book. You can always look up more information as the piece is being written if you find yourself stuck. (I’ve found the most of the time I have too much information, which can lead to the "where do I begin?" syndrome.)   
• Some people don’t care to hear what you have to say, and will never visit your blog. That doesn’t mean there aren’t plenty of people interested in you and your writing. If it interests you, it almost always interests someone else - even if it’s just your mother. (I write for myself now, the rest comes as a result of that.)   
• Just like waiting for the right time to have a baby, buy a house, or leave your job, there is no right time to start writing. Do it now! The very act of writing brings on the creativity - don’t expect inspiration to come on its own. Create your inspiration. (Nike has it right - Just do it!)

I’ve had to do a lot of looking inside myself to figure out why I stall with the projects I’m given. It’s a hard thing to do - to recognize that there is a problem and then to tackle it. I am more optimistic now that my work will take on new meaning, and I will find more time for getting more done. 

Do you have any irrational or rational fears that paralyze your writing? If so, please comment or write a post of your own about it! Just do it! 

~ Diane       

Photo courtesy of Flickr

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My daughter wants to be a writer. Technically, she already is. She wrote her first (3-page) book when she was 6, shortly after our beloved Maya-kitty had five little boy-kitties. She even illustrated the book. From the day she could hold a crayon in her left hand I knew she would be an artist, which is why she left me a bit surprised when she told me last month that she wants to be a writer.

I can’t remember how the topic of "what do you want to be when you’re older" came up, but she promptly argued that art is boring because she only knows how to draw so much, and that she can write about anything she wants. I reminded her that she could also draw anything she wants, so she made herself a compromise. She’s going to write books and then illustrate them.

This same dream hit me when I was 14 and in the phase of wearing black clothes with black Doc Martens while listening to Morrissey and The Cure and writing morose poetry. However, I’m not an artist in the way most people think of artists - I can design and have been told I’m a master with color - but I cannot for the life of me illustrate. I am not sure how I ended up with a "B" in Drawing and "C" in Human Figure Drawing while attending The Academy of Art in San Francisco.

To get back to the story - I didn’t want to write fiction and illustrate my stories. I wanted to write poetry and use my photography skills to illustrate the poem meanings.

I did eventually pass through that goth-like phase, but while my love of poetry and photography did not fade, the realization that I needed to pick a career that would pay my bills hit. Maybe some make money with poetry, but I pretty much gave up on that. Despite keeping the dream of writing for a living deep in the bottom of my heart, I ended up taking an entirely different direction from writing when it came time to go to school and get a job.

Fast forward several years, past a fiance that ended my art school attendance, a few mediocre jobs working for control-freaks, a new baby and then a new marriage (oops), past 2 years of Paralegal Studies that I was currently taking a break from because of another new baby….

It was 2004 and I was a stay at home mom.

Andie was 4; Sophia was just a baby. I took a semester off school because I knew I couldn’t do it with the new baby to watch out after (school was via distance education). Despite having my hands full with the girls, I was bored.

Then I met Lara, a local who loved scrapbooking and knitting, and she gave me the link to her knitting website one day. I had discovered what a blog was.

It wasn’t long before I had my own blog set up, and I quickly found that I was able to utilize both my writing skills and my love of design.

Having a relatively new marriage and two kids and no job, I had a lot of struggles and general bickering to write about. One day, I received a comment from someone named Wendy. She read my insights on life and my dreams of writing and she loved my writing style - she was also a writer (still is!) and wanted someone to help her with some ghostwriting. It wasn’t long until I received my first payment for an article and suddenly, I was a writer.

My daughter wants to be a writer. I peered over her shoulder this afternoon as she opened up Word and typed "The Wishing Well" in a scribbled font, followed by her "written and illustrated by" byline. The first line - "Agatha," said Mrs. Oliver with a scowl on her face. Miss Snark might have a few cross words about it, and Andie isn’t being paid to type her little story, but I’m loving it.

I love watching a new writer be born into the world of creativity.

And so it begins…for her. How did it begin for you?

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