A lot has been on my plate this month. I decided to start my own business, my art illustrations and my jewelry the focus. It’s entailed time away from fiction writing but directed me towards writing copy for the marketing end of my business, where I got my ideas for my jewelry and art. It brought me back to around the time I began attending the Deadwood Writer’s Group. I was writing a children’s picture book. I’d developed illustrations which now I am selling as prints on my Etsy page, www.wjkartisandesigns.com. It’s an exciting time in my life and I’m glad and grateful that I get to share these artworks in my own way now.
Another aspect that’s filled my attention is all that goes into starting a business. Finance, marketing, social media, product development – more jewelry and illustration development. It’s a bit nerve-racking to fit everything in, meaning my artistic nature and my need to write juicy and intriguing romances. But a smart woman, when I thought doing both was crazy, told me, “Why can’t you do both?” Her encouragement toward my success and happiness has always been given right when I needed it. So, thanks Mom. Love you!
On other exciting news, I’m going to Ireland soon. I’m not even there yet and I’m already inspired. What kind of stories will sprout from my visit, the brogue, the people, the colors, the constant green that everyone talks about? My heart gallops to fiery beat of a stampede when I think of all the opportunities that have become evident these past few months, words that have been spoken by friends and family. I’ve heard encouragement before, but this time, as my friend and sister of the heart, Jo Self- who is also a branding/strengths consultant for business and the individual, would say, I listened to what the universe was trying to tell me and am using the strengths I’ve been given to make positive things happen.
It’s March, and far from feeling like winter. I settle into my cushion bench seat and look around the room. This is still the only place to sit. I reach for my writing bag when my for-here mug of Columbian coffee is brought to my table restaurant style. What unexpected service. Coffee shops are usually more self-serve. I already know I’ll be back.
Time to look busy. First thing, set up the tablet. While it boots, I’ll look even more productive with my Happy Planner calendar on the table. It has my blog schedule in it. Next, my yellow notepad, a few colored pens and voila! I’m all set to do work.
I don’t feel productive. I feel cluttered. I’m restless.
I always carry a few distractions in my workbag. The item I’m craving to use is my Café Bingo game. It was a gift from my writerly friend, Kelly, who said, “I thought of you instantly when I saw it.” Yep, she got me right. The idea is to Bingo with coffee shop stereotypes. There are 12 cards, but I can play by myself. I wonder: can I cover the entire board, or at least get a bingo? There’s 0nly one way to find out.
These cards are reusable. Cool! I wasn’t sure how that worked. When I read “pushing back” the squares on the package, visions of pieces popping off onto the table, never to be replaced again filled my head. With this, you fold the cardstock squares back while playing and then refold them when you’re done. I’m set to play with only one rule: I can’t count myself in any of the squares.
— Barista
That’s the center square and a gimme.
— MP3 player
Who carries these anymore? I amend that to seeing a cell phone with headphones. I see a hipster guy plugged in over in the comfy chair corner.
— Tip Jar
There’s one at the register where I ordered. I don’t recall the handwritten note on it, but I’m sure it’s something like “Fear change? Leave it here” or “Tipping isn’t just for cows.”
— Newspaper
Sure enough, there’s an older man in a comfy leather lounge chair in the corner. He’s reading a real newspaper, buried beneath an umbrella of inky pages.
— Laptop
Uhhh…yeah. Who doesn’t come to a coffee shop without a laptop? You have to look hip and trendy and productive. Okay, I’m two for three right now, but my Surface has a detachable keyboard, so it would count for that square, if I included myself, which I’m not. I’m still hipster-ette.
— Briefcase
There’s a guy in business clothes–a suit, maybe–with a speckled tan bag next to him. I can’t see it exactly because it’s sitting on the floor and I don’t have a clear shot. I count it. I wouldn’t expect to see one of those hardcover square boxes with a latch and handle, and I’m surprised I think that.
— Cell Phone
This is another gimme. A more challenging square would be “No cell phone.”
— Reuse of Cup
Remember, I can’t count myself. A lot of people have for-here mugs on their tables. Some people don’t. What a waste. Unless it’s tea. Tea almost always needs a disposable cup.
— Date
I’m not sure how to count this. The square shows two stick figures holding hands with a heart between them. It’s just past lunchtime, so there are no caffeine kisses here. There are lots of people sitting together in twos, and I’m sure someone is on some kind of date. Meeting a friend for lunch, I count that.
— Iced Drink
I don’t see ice cubes anywhere, nor a dome lid cup sitting on any table. Straight ahead there’s a woman with what looks like an icy blended drink. It’s a shade color different than the store’s cardboard cups, but that’s good enough for me.
— Bulletin Board
This is a local coffee shop. Of course, there’s one. Heck, even Starbucks has them. The Fine Grind has theirs on the back wall between the bathrooms. I saw that the first time I was here, but I found it awkward to peruse while people pee nearby.
— Spilled Drink
I didn’t expect to see this, but within five minutes of pulling out this game, a patron sloshes something on the floor. It looks like water, but I feel rude staring at him.
— Meeting
There are no poster-board graphs or carpet swatches anywhere in here. There’s no table of suits. There’s no cluster of notepad papers. I bet some of these couples are in some sort of business meeting. I glance at Briefcase Guy and wonder, can I count him twice?
— Rushed Patron
There’s one person walking deliberately to the door, so I count him. He’s walking with a purpose not trudging along.
Now even the game is making me restless and bored. I don’t think I can find the rest of the squares right now. I can’t see outside the door, so I’m not sure there’s a Dog Waiting, another game square. This coffee shop is smooshed in a strip mall, not stretched on a quaint, tree-lined street among boutique stores, so I doubt I’d ever find one. The woman at the high-top table against the wall, she may be dressed in All-Black Attire, again another game square, but I can’t tell if those are black pants or dark blue dress pants.
The other items I can’t find now are: Book; Menu Typo; Foreigners; Student; Latte Art; Goatee; Political Debate; Pastry Crumbs; and Artiste Glasses.
What I can’t wait to find is a friend to play this game with.
Writers’ lives are full of pressure. We set goals for ourselves and inch our way toward deadlines. We study our craft, attend conferences, pitch ideas to agents, and network with all sorts of people on social media. We constantly long to write but never have as much time as we would like. Raising the stakes unnecessarily higher, we bravely tell non-writers that we’re writing a book . . . and later realize the magnitude of having released our secret. We’re now accountable when our friends innocently ask, “How’s the book coming?”
Remember this famous line: “All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy”? Repeated over and over, for pages and pages, that single sentence fills the white spaces of a fictitious, yet infamous, character’s work in progress. After days of producing nothing of substance for the book he’s supposed to be writing, Jack appears demented—or worse, possessed by a sinister ghost.
The iconic imagery above is, of course, from The Shining—Steven King’s 1977 bestselling novel later transformed into blockbuster horror film. It’s a dream for many writers to be as prolific and successful as Mr. King. But try as I may, I relate more to poor, ol’ menacing Jack: I could easily isolate myself from society, shore up in a room for days, and drown myself in my writing. I’m equally obsessed as he . . . luckily not possessed, at least not usually. Still, I know Jack’s frustration all too well. Like him, I’m not making significant progress on the two writing projects I’m most passionate about.
One of my unfinished books is the biography of a female pastor, Janet Noble-Richardson. My inspiration to write about Janet stems from her influence on my spiritual life. I never met anyone who expressed such abundant Christ-like love in their own behavior. Janet taught love by modeling it, and I admired her faith-filled approach. I want people to see the way Janet lived her life and to understand what it looks like to be in close relationship with Christ. I hope her story will inspire people to develop their own connections to Christ and make Him the priority in their lives.
My job to tell Janet’s story is complicated for a variety of reasons. I need to verify facts, but I can’t ask Janet for clarification of personal details. She died in a car accident in 2006. So, I’m piecing the story together through written documents she left and through interviews with people who knew her.
Janet’s father told me stories of raising his family in Pakistan, where he and his wife served as missionaries. The family met people from many different nations. American diplomats and foreign ambassadors regularly attended church services at the Noble’s home in Islamabad.
Pastor Noble recounted one story with great fondness, and I could appreciate how significant the moment was for him and his family. On a vacation into northern India, they met a boy who said he was studying under the Dalai Lama. Ever since encountering the boy, the family has wondered whether he grew up to become the current Dalai Lama.
I started researching Janet’s story over two years ago and quickly realized that in representing facts accurately I would have to expose hard truths like this: It’s improbable that the boy the family met in India in 1961 could be the same man who is the current Dalai Lama. My investigation indicates that His Holiness, the 14th Dalai Lama, had been living in Dharamsala at the time the Nobles were visiting the area. As I write this article in 2017, however, the 14th Dalai Lama is still alive. Before the next can be chosen, His Holiness must die and reincarnate. Therefore, the 15th Dalai Lama has yet to be born, if at all. That means that the boy the Nobles met may have been a student of some sort, but he couldn’t have been training to be the Tibetan religious leader.
You can see why Janet’s biography is complicated. I hate thinking that I could ruin another really good family story. Regardless, I’m committed to doing my best, even if it takes me a decade to get the book done.
The other book I’m writing is for children. The story is flowery and fanciful—a work of fiction in which flora and fauna talk to one another. It has villains and heroes, conflict, resolution, symbolism, and a heart-warming ending. It is the kind of book that binds grandparents to their grandkids. The elders will want to read it aloud and the youth will cherish the book as their favorite.
I know the premise and I’m developing the cast of characters. One is named Grace—not for a didactic religious purpose, but because I promised my best friend during middle school that one day, I would name one of my children after her, Marjorie Grace.
You may all be thinking: finish one book before you start another. But writers don’t think like that. We can’t stop the ideas that come flooding our way. We do our best to harness them. Sometimes we’re desperate and reach for scraps of paper and napkins to scribble upon. Other times, we trap our story arcs in fancy journals until it’s time to unravel our thoughts and spin them into order with the help of software like Microsoft Word and Scrivener.
When friends like you ask how my books are coming, I know I overuse the words, “I wish I had more time to write,” and it feels like a horribly weak excuse. But I don’t worry about the time it takes. I know that I’m a work in progress too. While I’m forever thinking, composing, revising, and promoting, God is taking His time refining me—shaping my life through the people and experiences that are unique to me. I’m growing in knowledge and developing new skills. I’m learning to be a better person by juggling the demands of everyday life, experiencing burdens and joys, dealing with complex issues and personalities.
When oppressive thoughts lure me into thinking that it would be quicker and easier to check out from society—like Jack did—to mine my treasures, I know better. Fairy tale endings aren’t discovered in privacy and seclusion. Life among the living is rich with inspiration. I’m savoring my time in the real world with family and friends. I’m at peace knowing that I’ll finish what I need to when the time is perfectly right.
It really does come down to games, Dominos or not.
This afternoon is my writing time. I’m sitting at a table against the wall under the lamp shade so I have light to type by. I just finished two Americanos, light on steamed milk. The first Americano had a smidge of gingerbread syrup to spice up the holiday season, and the second was just straight up. You’d think I was a serious coffee drinker, but, really, I’m just a novice who latched onto some impressive-sounding coffee name. I feel like I belong here.
Tuscan Cafe: environmentally friendly
I’m gathering my laptop and notebook to leave when a guy and a boy walk in and sit at the small circular table by the window. From what I overhear, he seems to be a Big Brother to the 13-year-old 8th grader.
I’ve got plenty of room on my rectangular table for everything I have, so I stop packing up and pull out my journal to record the moment.
BB leans forward and asks, “How’s the relationship with you and your brothers?” That’s what makes me think Big Brother in the first place. That and the time is now 3:30pm, which is just after school.
I overhear BB say he likes that the boy plays Minecraft, that “…it’s a game that requires you to work as a team.” I don’t know the game, but I feel like I should. I’ve heard it enough in pop culture media. Note to self: look that up.
Now BB teaches the boy how to play Dominos. This is significant because last night I watched my Season 2 DVD set of Major Crimes. The last episode I saw is what I call the Lost Horizons episode. Tim Conway plays the episode’s main character, Howard. In one scene, he flirts with the female lead, Capt. Raydor, mentioning Dominos.
Howard: “I could teach you to play Dominos, but I, uh, don’t have my Dominos with me.”
Capt. Raydor: “I already know how to play Dominos.”
Howard: “I bet you do.”
At the same time, in another room, Lt. Provenza questions someone else who talks about Dominos.
Provenza says, “It always comes down to Dominos.”
So here I am, watching BB teach the boy to play. I don’t know how to play Dominos, actually. I know how to match numbers but not the rules of scoring. I also know how to stack them in a row so they all fall down. Who plays Dominos?
I half listen as I write and half watch without trying to stare directly at them. I want to hear BB explain how to play. The big window gives me an excuse to look in that direction. If we accidentally make eye contact, I can glance over at the bike chained to the tree or the church across the street or the cars driving by on Center Street. I could even turn my head to the left and stare at the long, roomy wooden table that divides the coffee shop into thirds.
Coffee drinks and games: together time
My husband and I play games in coffee shops, usually Yahtzee in various Starbucks. It’s a Travel Yahtzee game we, ironically, bought at Starbucks a few years ago when they promoted toys and activities among their products. We have Travel Scrabble from that time, and we’ve bought other portable games through the years. These are our “date nights” because we get out of the house, spend time together and drink coffee. A long table like that one would be roomy, but distant. We choose cozy tables like this one I’m at or the one the guys are sitting at now.
I miss any Dominos explanation over the mellow music playing overhead, but the discussion of games continues. BB: “I wasn’t good at Tetris when I was young.” Now I have a frame of reference of the guy’s age. He’s a child of the 80s.
Then BB asks: “Is that coffee making you tired?”
Boy: “Yeah.”
Thirteen years old and introduced to coffee. That’s our society today.
BB and boy wrap up their visit and pack up the chunky white tiles into a snap-close metal box. I never hear how to play Dominos, but the game box looks like it was the original BB had as a younger guy.
I’ve seen some people play games in coffee shops. Last week, at Miracle Coffee, two women had a pile of board games, they looked old, worn and well-loved. Gathering their games up when we arrived, they saw us pull out our Travel Yahtzee. We all got talking about board games. They may have mentioned that there is a Triple Yahtzee game out there, a game I vaguely remember, like maybe I had it as a kid. Maybe I still have it. I’ll look through my childhood toy box in the basement.
Classic board games have become “the thing” these days. The box designs look retro, but they’re all too new, looking fake. I believe in using authentic items. In scrapbooking, I use the real photo, scan a copy if it’s precious and irreplaceable. In mixed media art, I incorporate real tickets, tea bag tags, and cancelled stamps. Because of this, I prefer original game boxes that hold the authentic game.
Games are a good thing, old or new, especially if they bring us together.
It’s December, and I’m running around with holiday madness. I don’t have the time to remember my gift list let alone what I did or didn’t accomplish this year. In fact, if hadn’t written them down, I’d have forgotten I even had thoughts to change my world.
I don’t believe in resolutions. Too often they’re wishes without a specific plan for success. That’s why I embraced my writers’ group commitment to three Non-Resolutions for 2015. The challenge was to identify the “specific and concrete” steps to “improve yourself as a writer.” I did this thinking it a simple challenge something specific and easy it’s the end of the year, tis the season to look ahead while looking back. so I share my successes and failures in life, the universe and everything else.
How did I do? Let’s just say I take ownership of my actions and my non-actions. These were my commitments:
1.(A) Find an editor and (B) publish my memoir before June 2015.
Nope. Nope, nope, nope. Not even close. Every time I sat down to edit, thinking the book just needed some tweaking, I found a jumble of sentence fragments and missplelled words instead. I suspected that organizing the non-chronological series of vignettes was the problem. I came up with creative ways to procrastination. I read blog posts by fiction and nonfiction writers to learn how they handled organization. I read a memoir to see how it was organized. I found checklists to follow, but still my story didn’t flow.
That got me thinking about format and tools to ease my struggles. I purchased Scrivener, a software program has a “corkboard” to organize my thoughts and scenes so I can rearrange as often as needed with a swift swipe of my mouse. This is a useful procrastination, I told myself. I spent two weeks slugging through the detailed tutorial and then hit a snag with the program. I set it aside in frustration to continue after November’s NaNoWriMo. It’s December and is still untouched.
2.Explore at least one new book/genre and revisit an old favorite.
This was a flop. Aside from reading that one memoir early in the year, I didn’t finish another book.
I started what I presumed was “an old favorite” but it wasn’t as interesting as I remembered. I found a sci-fi book that both Mom and I read. I committed to read it at night, maybe not every night, but I put it and a spare pair of reading glasses on my nightstand for convenience. The only space available was at the edge, so the book is too far to reach, and my clumsy, ill-fitting dollar store glasses are awkward to wear. I have made reading more complicated than it should be.
3.Set aside time to journal at least once a month.
I accomplished this! I may have skipped weeks at a time, but I wrote more, that I know. That I feel. I mingled my thoughts with blog posts and ideas, sprinkled between to-do lists and notes from writers’ conferences and meetings. I rediscovered that I write more fluidly by hand, so I spent more time journaling just for the fun and love of writing on paper. Writing by hand is organic to me, so I will keep journaling.
Nothing is truly a failure. These commitments did not need to be complete, nor did they need to be completed for me to succeed. I learned about myself and gained some valuable perspectives and insights into my actions.
What did I learn?
I need to break my writing and editing tasks into smaller snippets and set a timer. Tell myself “Tuesday morning, research editors” and allot 27 minutes only. I’ll know at the end of the timer I’ll either need a break or feel inspired to keep working. It’s how I survived and won NaNoWriMo.
In 23, 27 or 33 minute segments, I wrote 50,721 words in the last 20 days of the months. I started on November 11, so this equaled 2500 words/day which for me was about 1 1/2 hours per day. That means I can find the time to write because I have the time when I’m not distracted by Major Crimes on TV or Angry Birds on my phone. I remind myself of this daily because not only is it motivating but because in the madness of the month, I discovered a 25,000-word story, a complete one that I can actually work with and interests me. I consider the purchase a distraction and a success. I can use Scrivener to organize this book as I edit to publish by the end of 2015, a swift spellbinding sequel to my initial Jimmy the Burglar book.
Getting back to my roots of handwriting gave me the opportunity to see what I was thinking. Words on paper, written by my hand, helped me focus on what I want to do with my writing. I will change the focus of my blog to include more writing, insights, interviews and inspiration. Posts on Deadwood Writers Voices may change. I want to entertain my readers, offer them something worthwhile, while writing topics that excite my passion and enthusiasm. I’m exploring what those topics may be.
As for reading books, I will purchase a better pair of reading glasses.
