View of the Housatonic River taken in Oxford, Conn.
It’s November, and my friends who participate in NaNoWriMo (or NaPodPoMo for podcasters!) every year have finally inspired me and I want to get into writing this month.
November seems like the most idyllic time for writing when I picture it in my mind. Cozy sweaters, candlelight, warmth from a fire, or a heating pad in my case. It’s currently 6:51 a.m. and it’s been the first time in I don’t know how long I’ve woken up before my son, who is the loudest alarm clock on the planet.
I made this weird promise to myself a while back that if I naturally wake up at 6 a.m. or around that time, I would have some slow morning self-care, like taking a shower and making some tea, and go to my office and write.
I even have a sticky note on my monitor that says “6 a.m.— Hi Emily, you are a writer 🙂 You have another book in you”
I see it every time I work so it reminds me of that promise to myself.
For this month, I’ve decided on some loose objectives, and I’ll report back at the end of the month to see how I did in the Monthly Roundup.
My goals for the month are:
Work on a creative writing project, namely this blog and what it might become
Create a writing process and a daily practice I LOVE! (If I miss a day, there will be NO guilt and I’ll keep going the next day)
I’m not going to give myself a goal of words or posts, but I am loosely keeping track and thinking of it in terms of NaNoWriMo, in a way
My whole life I dreamed of being a writer. It’s only now that I finally feel like I have something to write about, even though I did the whole time, I just didn’t believe I did.
In fact, that’s been an interesting shift this year. I was writing web copy and presentations for my business, and anything else that wasn’t related got stored in my Morning Pages (from “An Artist’s Way” by Julia Cameron, great book!).
The problem I found, especially during the pandemic, was I was writing in my journal everything creative I was feeling and keeping it “safely” in there. A lot of Morning Pages was also processing what was going on, and really, it kept me from getting caught in an online firestorm by keeping everything there.
It allowed me to be free with my thoughts but after a while, I realized I was this really cool, interesting person — but I didn’t feel like I could express it anywhere.
I also couldn’t decide which idea to take and run with. I had so many throughout the day. Last year for November, I kept a notebook near the couch and would write down every podcast idea and brainstorm it. By the end of the month, I had 50!
Thanks to my entrepreneurial ADHD brain, I spent a few hours designing cover art and buying the domain for a podcast where every episode I would go through those ideas one by one. I had the idea to call it Podcast Brainstorm. I think I came up with some marketing ideas too. I wanted some kind of output. I didn’t even know if these ideas were “good,” but in my head, I saw how they could work.
And, I’ll be honest, I felt a lot of guilt and shame that I was in the podcasting industry and wasn’t currently podcasting.
John and I put Hate to Weight on hiatus, and after doing the audiobook for The Story Behind, I was really burnt out on it. No topic held my attention long enough to research and write— not that I had 3-4 hours of uninterrupted time to do that much anymore.
Ultimately, I didn’t start Podcast Brainstorm, but I still keep the notebook as a reminder that I won’t be able to do all the ideas I want to do.
In the Queer ADHD community session, one of the leaders made a great observation about that. He said “Can you imagine how much shame and guilt Leonardo da Vinci probably had over all the ideas he didn’t get to see come to fruition?”
But I can still get them out of my head and the process, alone, definitely lights up my dopamine center. Maybe that, in itself, is actually my hobby — planning to do other hobbies and getting all excited!
So for me, I’ve decided that I want to take each month to focus on just ONE thing. And it can be broad. So this month’s focus is going to be to write!
I somehow stumbled onto a blogging method of writing and editing that worked really well for me, and that is writing and saving this as a draft, and then coming back later to read through and edit it, adding links and photos and what-not. It’s still in the trial-and-error phase, but so far, it’s been working well!
Because one thing I know I need in order to write is knowing there’s an editor. Writing “The Story Behind” and then seeing so many awkward sentences when I re-read it for the audiobook I think really messed with me and made me feel unworthy of writing a book again, if we’re being honest here.
But this blog has made me excited again! Although it is scary and I still haven’t gotten up the guts to make the site live, as of this writing, I’m grateful I feel fulfilled by a new project and focus. And one that feels very aligned with what I want for my life.
I also realized I needed to put a hold on the voice in my head that says “Blogs are so common! Nothing will come from a blog nowadays!” The podcast consultant in me is thinking of the ratio of blogs to podcasts (5,000 to 1) and shaking her head. One of the ways I’m calming that voice is by saying, “Oh shush, maybe I’ll turn it into a podcast someday!”
Now, wouldn’t it be cool to be reading that sentence out loud on the podcast? Well, now that I’ve had the idea and the mental image, I’m very much into it.
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