No, don’t go tossing your vat of candy corn.
You’ve engulfed your brain with too much media.
Time for a news fast.
It does nothing but bring you down and, even worse, keep you from your real work.
Image courtesy of gratisography.com
Writers Horoscope for October 10: Others seek you out.
Of course others seek you out!
After all, you put words together in clear, concise fashion.
You’re brimming with creative and unique avenues of expression.
Wellllll, there’s a problem.
You’re being sought out today for another of your attractive traits: perceived free time.
“Oh, it’s just a little yard work,” they say.
It’s never just ‘a little’.
You could go with yesterday’s suggestion: turn and run.
Or you could throw a fit…
Or you could show a creepingly inordinate amount of enthusiasm for the work.
That oughta cut back on the calls for help.
Writers Horoscope for October 9: Perfectionism’s creeping in.
You could turn and run.
Or meet it head-on…with a new sentence, then a paragraph, a page, a chapter, a book.
Seth Godin keeps his view of perfection pretty darned simple.
Here’s another take:
One thing is certain: perfection is not a blank page.
Writers Horoscope for October 8: Today, you can learn your ‘why’.
Writers Horoscope for October 7: A New Voice Emerges.
Uninvited, by the way.
Yep, just when you thought you had nailed the logical soft-spoken maybe a bit uptight mid-40s professional, out comes an irascible sarcastic dope who spews about everything he knows nothing about.
Give him a day. Have a chat with him. You might even try to scare him away.
If the creep is still around, make room for him in one of your stories.
Writers Horoscope for October 6: Still unmotivated? Look inside you.
Following yesterday’s suggestions, you cleaned up your physical workspace.
It only helped a little.
Time to clean up your inner workspace.
Here’s a great start, thanks to Todd Brison’s 195 Words to Keep You Going If You Feel Down.
Highlights:
- He takes aim at ‘Comfort’ and ‘Safety’.
- He tells us to listen to our inner ‘don’t give up’ messages.
Give it a shot.
Writers Horoscope for October 5: Feeling unmotivated? Look around you.
Turns out you shouldn’t knock yourself for feeling listless…apathetic…phlegmatic. Well, you get the idea.
James Clear claims that, in many cases, our work environment influences our productivity more than our motivation.
Suggestions:
- Automate your working space to steer yourself toward good decisions. Example: Use software to block access to social media sites.
- Place meaningful, productive tools [non-wifi connected laptop] within easy reach. He calls it ‘getting in the flow’.
- Negate your unproductive influences. In other words, hide the bad food. Don’t work near the TV. Clear out the clutter, which consistently drains our focus.
Now, if you lack motivation to sharpen up your work environment, well, that’s a topic for another day. Sympathy will not be forthcoming, however.
Writers Horoscope for October 4: You find a new audience.
Hulk’s into zoology.
Boo likes martial arts.
Bear prefers self-help.
Granted, some listeners might require a little more encouragement than others.
And remember yesterday’s advice to ‘be interesting’?
You stand a really good chance with this demographic. Just give it a little time.
I should have been writing. Instead…biscuits.
Yep, biscuits. So much more rewarding than wrangling over a first draft that points to the dwindling intellect of a ‘certain writer’.
They were the finale after the arugula pesto and the tofu spread.
Pretty sure I lost my two readers with those last two words, but stick with me here…
Solution to tofu that tastes [and behaves] like spackle: Heat the olive oil, bloom the spices in the oil, *then* add the tofu, the caramelized onions, the arugula, and whatever else won’t resist your purposeful grope into the fridge.
Essentially, you make a tofu scramble and pulverize it in the food processor. Now you actually have something with flavor that you can spread on bread, but without the sinfulness of cheese.
Back to the biscuits…today, I used the New York Times’ all-purpose biscuit recipe as my starting point. I had already sullied the food processor when I made the pesto, so I snagged a cube of butter from the freezer and grated it into the flour. [The photo below is telling me I should have also added parm to the mix.]
So, no cheese this time, but afternoon coffee and biscuits ensued.
Sitting in the backyard sun, feet up on another chair, two of my favorite foods, my truly favorite person, and the knowledge that the writing projects will still be there when I saunter back. Life’s good.
Writers Horoscope for October 3: Time to seek out a new skill.
Okay, you embraced that willingness to be an awkward beginner.
Bravo!
Now that the inclination is there, let’s look to something you’ve not tried yet.
Like–don’t take this personally–‘being interesting’.
Check out list item #24 in Shaunta Grimes’ 25 Habits That Will Make You a Writer.
Go be interesting!
Word Inventions 