Sometimes we need tools to help focus: New Year 2009
by Ms. Babble on December 30, 2008
in My Life in General
I bought this journal yesterday to help motivate myself to focus my creativity. I’ve been busy writing for a million other projects and feel I haven’t given enough energy to the personal book I’ve wanted to write since I first started pondering one in 2006.
Call it a New Years resolution if you’d like but I think it’s simply coincidence that it’s come into my possession a few days before 2009 begins.
My only goal with this journal is to realize a focus for a book. I have a million stories and experiences swimming in my head and online. They need to be molded. I’m simply overwhelmed by the prospect but I believe that, with care, I can tell my stories in a way that can be beneficial. I think I’ll take it slowly and hope that by the end of 2009, I’ll have it all figured out.
A $50 Italian leather bound journal seemed like a good place to start.
I thought my first entry was appropriately hilarious and practical:
I bought this today in exchange for a Christmas gift I ended up not giving to someone. My intention is to write in this book (nearly) every day of 2009 until I can come up with a decent focus for a book.
see: Thesis
Sometimes I may feel the need to simply write about the weather or what I ate or how much time it took me to drive from one point to the next during my day.
What a great start.
Cheers to all your goals for 2009!
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Jami, I can tell you from experience that this is one hell of an undertaking you’re looking at right here. For all of ‘08 I’ve been sticking to my “one poem a day everyday” and nearing the end of it is thrilling. My own non-fiction book has been a stalled project for over a year now, but that’s a whole different story.
The best advice I can give you is write down everything that comes to you, regardless of how you might feel about it as you’re writing it, or after you’ve finished a sentence… and don’t scratch out a word, if anything highlight what you like, but keep it all. There will be pieces you’ll grow to love, things you’ll think are great but turnout to be nothing special and as the only writing teacher who ever told me anything of worth once said- “there’s no writer’s block, and there’s no bad writing. sometimes it just takes 10 pages of shit to get one page of gold”.
Best of luck to you, and I look forward to seeing everything you come up with.
As usual, Jami, I give you simple words of encouragement….the main thing is keep on trying, don’t give up. Sometimes when I want to accomplish things…but just don’t know where to start, or it feels so dang overwhelming…I just start one step at a time, one day at a time, and before I know it, it’s well on it’s way. Wow, 2009!!! How did another year go by again….HAPPY NEW YEAR!
its simple to say keep on trying, but there is a say, you get what you put in. hope 2009 can be a better year for all