Nostalgia

‎"Nostalgia is the disease which causes us to miss the truly great days in front of us for the idealized ones behind us." 

-D. Megill

I just read this quote, and it got me to wondering...is nostalgia really bad?

Trust me, I thought about this for quite some time, and I have to say the quote has its merits.  But I, for one, really do like nostalgia. It helps to forget past hurts, and remember past joys.  Is that such a bad thing?

I've recently been going through a difficult time.  We moved 18 months ago from a rural home in the middle of a beautiful area to a beautiful house in the midst of the 5th largest metropolitan area in the U.S. I'm suffering from culture shock, loss of friends and a way of life I grew to love.

Since I've been here, I've focused mostly on working and the other day I looked in the mirror and saw my father, who literally worked himself to death because he just couldn't get enough done.  He did make time for fun, but the rest of the time, he worked.

I'm losing sleep because of work, I'm not as fun (according to my kids) because of work, and I am moody (according to my husband). I blame work.

The problem is, I LOVE my work.

So, maybe that's not the real problem.

I think the real problem is that I miss some of the things I used to do to "feed" myself.  Things I haven't started in my new life because I don't have friends and companions who have similar interests, and just "make" me do things.


Nostalgia. n. 1. A bittersweet longing for things, persons, or situations of the past. 2. The condition of being homesick; homesickness ...

It's true, then. I'm missing people, things, and situations from my past.  That is NOT bad.  It reminds me that I need to reincorporate things that were important to me.  In order to return to my former self, I have to return to some of those activities, and nostalgia helped me to realize it.

I'll still be working long hours, probably deep into the night.  But, I'm also focused on the changes I need to make to find a happiness that I thought was lost.

No, nostalgia is NOT a bad thing.

Medical Journaling

Writing things down can save you huge headaches.  You make a list before you go to the grocery store, you write down what you want to take on vacation or that week-long back-packing trip.  Without a visual reminder, we tend to forget little things that end up being very important.

Writing about your health does the same thing.  All too often I hear about people who have some sort of weird, mysterious illness.  They don't remember when it started, they don't know what makes it better, or what makes it worse.  They go to the doctor, expecting to be cured in a single visit with a single prescription, and when they continue to suffer, or their condition gets worse, they blame their doctor.

What a shame! Granted, doctors go to school for a long time to learn about medicine and how to heal illness. But no doctor knows everything, has seen everything, can read minds, can scry into the future, and they certainly can't look back into our past unless we give them some way to see into it.

This is where a medical journal comes in handy.

Let's say you notice that when you eat out at a certain restaurant, you end up with the trots. Just about every time. This happened to me, and I was pretty upset because it was a pizza place and I LOVE their pizza.  I tried to figure out what could be the problem.  Was it the sauce?  I tried pizza without sauce.  Was it the crust?  I tried just eating the toppings off the pizza and filling up on salad.  The next time I settled for a sub.

It seemed that no matter what I ate off their menu, I had a big problem when I got home.

I decided to be more scientific about it.  I took a small notebook with me (you see, I didn't want to stop eating there because I really did love the place). I would write down everything I touched, everything I did, even to the point of noting where I sat.

After a couple of visits, it finally hit me.  At that time in my life I had recently stopped drinking soda.  I didn't need the sugar, and I certainly didn't need the caffeine.  However, whenever we went to this particular pizza place, we'd get a pitcher of soda for the family and I would treat myself to a glass.

I was reacting to the sugar in the soda.

Imagine my delight when I discovered that I didn't have to stop eating at our favorite pizza place.  I just had to switch to iced tea or water. (no diet drinks for me...I won't even start with what those chemicals can do to you...)

Without taking detailed notes about the situation, I would never have figured out that a small change would allow me to continue to enjoy our monthly outing at the pizza parlor.

This experience made me realize that whenever people have an ailment that they can't seem to figure out, take notes about it.  Copious notes!  Your doctor will be really relieved that you can provide such a detailed history about your condition without trying to rely on an imperfect memory.

The next time you have a problem that doesn't seem to want to respond to a course of treatment, journal about it.  Many times you will discover something that seemed really insignificant, but can make a huge difference in the outcome!

Write on!

Stick With It

Writing can be a love/hate relationship.

Sometimes you love it...and other times it becomes your master, you dream about it, you have nightmares about it, you discover you have written pages and pages of material that has absolutely nothing to do with your current project. These moments can be discouraging because you really are working hard, you've got your butt in the chair, you're producing material, and yet it isn't what you want.

What do you do then?

Put the material that you feel has nothing to do with your current project and stick it in a file folder, label it, and put it away for a week or more.  This will accomplish two things:

1. It will acknowledge to yourself that you value what you have done and your mind will be at rest.
2. You will now have material that may be good for another project at some point in the future.  

You see, I don't believe that ANY writing is worthless.  Your brain comes up with material for its own reasons.  Sometimes it creates material because you've told it to do so...other times it comes up with things all on its own and you may not understand why you wrote it.  No matter. Put it away.  Keep it. Go back later and look through it.  You'll often discover that the writing isn't half bad, in fact, it might even be really good material.

Unfortunately, that doesn't handle the problem that what you're writing on now still needs to move forward.  Refocus.  Start asking yourself some questions.  What does your reader need to know right now?  Rather than being egocentric and writing only to please yourself, try getting into your reader's head.  What does he/she want/need to know?  How can you move them along in the process?

This is where you jump back into your project and move ahead.

By getting into your readers' heads, you'll become a much better writer overall. I don't care if you write for magazines, if you're a copywriter, or if you specialize in web copy...by understanding the purpose of your writing and knowing your audience, you're going to become a much better writer.

Trust me on this...stick with it. Writing comes easily at times and at other times it is work.

Most of the time, when it's work...it's because you haven't gotten into the head of your reader.

Go on, you know what to do now...WRITE!

To your writing success,

Kathleen

Renewal

Isn't it interesting how different seasons of the year become a time of renewal?  For me, September is my time of greatest renewal.  Perhaps it was because I loved school and in those days school started the day after Labor Day.

I love the smell of paper and pencils, of glue and erasers. To me, these are the tools of creativity and when they are brand new, their potential is limitless.

Whenever I get stuck on something, I find a way to renew myself.  Sometimes, a project that takes longer than expected can feel old, musty, overworked, sometimes even useless.  However, most of the time I can't really afford to just toss it in the trash can.  I have to figure out a way to renew the project so that it feels new, so that I can recapture that feeling of excitement that got me started on it in the first place.

Recently, I have been working on a book with a doctor in Australia. Initially, we expected the book to only take us two months to write. At first, we made significant progress.  Then, as we ran into some roadblocks, one or the other of us had to attend to other matters, and the book began to languish.

In order to refocus and reinvigorate myself for the project, I decided to just change the formatting of the book, putting it into a book template so that I could see what it might look like in its final form.  Just seeing the book in that way changed my feeling about the project significantly.  Once again I felt that old enthusiasm for the project begin to bubble up.  The audience was one step closer to getting information that would ease their suffering.

Taking time to renew can mean the difference between life and death of a project.

What do you do to renew yourself?

To your writing success,

Kathleen

Outline Your Book or Article

Why outline your book or article?

Everyone’s groaning.  I can hear you!

It’s too bad your English teachers in high school and college made outlining so complicated and painful. They had the right idea, outlines really DO help you to figure out where you’re going in your writing.  I love the idea of free-writing, especially when I’m trying to get thoughts out of my head.  But, I also love the idea of using an outline, because once the structure of my writing project is out there in front of me, I can then return to my free-writing style to fill it in and meet my deadlines.

Too Structured?


I have heard all the reasons NOT to outline:

• ·         It’s too structured.
• ·         It doesn’t allow any creativity
• ·         It restricts my writing

Most of the people who use these excuses don’t write for a living. When you write for a living, you know that your next paycheck depends on meeting your deadlines, and you don’t write only when you’re feeling creative or when the muse strikes you. Writing is a job. You get paid when you sit down and work. By outlining your articles and books you will maximize your time, you’ll write efficiently, and your end product will be high quality.

Breaking it Down – One Piece at a Time


By outlining, you breakdown your project into smaller pieces.  That way you can approach it one piece at a time.  When I’m working on a big writing project, I create the larger outline, then I put each smaller section on a 3 x 5 card and carry it with me in a notebook. That way when I am waiting somewhere, I can write for five minutes and get a section done. Doing this several times will allow me to finish a 1200 word article almost without even realizing that I did it.  By fitting the writing of your book into the nooks and crannies of your life, you will make daily progress toward your goal.

The Easiest Outline

When I outline, I don’t create the complicated Roman Numeral I, Capital A, the number 1, etc. of the traditional outline.  (If you DO outline this way, keep it up, you’re probably more structured than I am, and this could be a good thing). I break down my article or book into manageable pieces.  In an article, I break it down into sections. A book is obviously broken down into chapters.

For each chapter or section you’ll have a title, this tells you what you’ll be covering in that section.  Underneath that title, you’ll write each topic or component that needs to be included in that section. By evaluating each section, you can rearrange them until you have a good flow to your idea. This way, when you go to write, you will not be jumping from idea to idea, sounding vague and scattered. Each section will be approximately the same size.  For a book, this is a really great idea, it will keep you from having chapters that are only two pages long next to chapters that are 70 pages long.

Try this for outlining your book.  Decide how many pages you want in your book. If this is your first book, shoot for about 150 to 160 pages.  Divide this number by 10, which gives you 15 or 16 chapters. Under each chapter title, write about ten ideas that you intend to cover in that chapter. For each idea, you need to write one page.  That’s it.  Write ten pages, you’ve completed a chapter. Write 15 or 16 chapters, your book is done.

It doesn’t really get much easier than that!

Try it, again and again. It will get easier as time goes on, and you'll write faster and faster.  And isn't that the idea?

Kathleen

Memoir - Truth or Fiction?

It is said that writing one's memoirs is much like writing a piece of fiction.  In order to make your story come alive, you need to populate it with characters that are individuals; well described and round.

Are all characters in a memoir absolutely true to life?

Not necessarily.

There are times when you'll want to disguise your character in the interest of preserving their privacy.  You may also want to save your own skin, especially if you're revealing a secret that you promised long ago to keep. You can write a truthful memoir, and still change names, ages, even sexes of certain characters for these reasons.

Most writers of memoir try to stay as close to the truth of the situation as they possibly can.

But what is truth?

Truth is in the eye of the beholder.  Truth is a matter of perspective. Truth can be different for different people.  If I were to write a memoir of my childhood and my siblings were to do the same, it makes sense that some of the stories would be the same.  What would be different, however, is the perspective of those stories.  My brother and I could write about the very same event, and we could both tell the absolute truth about that event.

The interesting point of this exercise is to demonstrate that truth is different for each person. Our stories would be VASTLY different!

So, when you go to write your memoir, write it as truthfully as you can.  You may know a LARGER truth now that you are older, but in the interest of keeping your perspective in your memoir, try to retain the truth that you knew of the event at the time. This will also help you to determine if you are writing from the perspective of age and wisdom, or if you're re-entering yourself at a younger and greener age, and expressing the truth of the situation from that perspective.

Interesting point of view, isn't it?

Write on,

Kathleen

What's a Blueprint?

People are always looking for a process for writing. Or, rather, if you're trying to get your writing going, having a process can be one of the ways around that thing called "Writer's Block".

Blueprinting is another word for an outline, only it's a really, really special outline.

Blueprinting the process of your writing project is looking at it from beginning to end. You need to know at least 80% of what you're going to write about. Each chapter or portion of what you're writing needs to be thought out, planned out, and blueprinted. 

How do you blueprint?

You ask yourself what is the single most important thing your reader needs to know at this point. Then you begin the process of filling in all the details.  Ask yourself the "who, what, when, where, why, and how" questions for each point. That's right...you're creating questions.

Why?

Because your brain likes to answer questions, and there is little chance that you will develop "writer's block" when you're answering the questions.

That's the secret behind blueprinting your writing project.  Every point you want to cover, you turn into a question.  Then you answer that question in as much detail as you possibly can. Suddenly you're turning out a great deal of writing almost without effort.

What's even greater is that while you're developing the blueprint for your project, you can see where you're going and you can keep things in the right order.

I hope this helps your next writing project.

Best,

Kathleen