Mother: Then and Now

Williamsburg, Brooklyn; A Journey/Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
An Altered Book
Mixed Media, 2003

Chapter 4: Mother (found poetry)

left page: MOTHER

right page:
be
through the streets

the spirit of

life, damn it!

a passion
leading

tide of
the years

and even

Once
arose
faithful
fury

are you ?
here

hunted

and her
unexpressed
dream
presence

about

It's very interesting. I made this altered book long before I was an actual mother. And although I wanted to be a mother, some day, it was an abstract concept. Whenever I thought about mothering or pregnancy or birth, it was always in terms of creation... creating art.

Here the chapter given to me was "Mother" and all I could think about was being an artist. I'm sure he, the original author, Sherwood Anderson made his chapter about being the son of a mother, perhaps looking at his mother in her age, after years of being the mother of a man. Now I look at it an what is trying to be born is The Self, from the depths of The Mother.

How often, in history, in literature, in art, is a mother considered for herself, rather than for who she mothers, how she mothers, her iconic position as Mother?

Oh, maybe it's changing, now that more women have a voice, now that mothers are beginning to speak out about what it means to be a woman, a human being, as a mother.

left page: yes

right page: something/needs/to be/born.

Where I am now, as a stay at home mother whose time is dedicated to caring for her children all day long but who is also trying to carve out a place in all this for her art and writing, is confused.

I think it's a balancing act. A continual balancing act. Weighting my tasks this way or that, looking for a place for myself and giving my children the love and attention that they deserve.

Sometimes I think I have a balance and everything seems to be flowing easily... but that always falls apart as my goals change or external circumstances change, or the children change... as is their job, to change and grow.

This balance is not a static thing. It is fluid and sometimes more like a juggler trying to catch something before it falls, rather than some perfectly balanced thing.

Yesterday I worked on my new novel for one and a half hours. No. TWO hours. I took one hour when the girl went to nap, then a half hour while they were eating. then another half hour when we all went out to the back yard, I sat on the swing seat and they ran around with fudgcicles trying to find various ways of getting dirty. They succeeded better than I did, to be honest, coming in for bed filthy. My brain was clogged and cluttered and having a hard time focusing.

I got quite few ideas for my book yesterday, but had some trouble putting them in order. Balancing them.

Well, today is another day and I will look for my bits of time to work in between naps and meals and I recorded an ocean documentary so the boy will probably be engrossed for an hour while I focus on getting all those new ideas down in some sort of order.

Must remember to keep breathing and remember the long view. Be nice to myself. I think it will help me stop snapping at the kids when they spill their cheerios on the floor, yet again.

Paper Pills

Williamsburg, Brooklyn; A Journey/Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
An Altered Book
Mixed Media, 2003

Chapter 3: Paper Pills
left page: PAPER PILLS
an/with/a/and/and/the/which/will/a/and/a/to/through/or/a/had/a/when/The/was/and/and/
in/the/a/the/The/of/When/like/of/as/as/by/a/after/all/in/by/that/with/never/the/on/in/but/
it/and/it/the/but/there/the/of something

right page:

in

above

ceaselessly

that

truth

again

erect

tall

years

had

the

ino

scraps of paper

of

pockets

upon

another

tree

playful

a

man

you

laughter

sotry

girl

curious

grow

fall

hard.

black page: delicious
white page: I// w//a//n//t// i//w//a//n//t// nothing/all

sideways: the word. the whole universe in the word.

all of the odds and ends of thought scribbled on the bits of paper.

So yesterday I worked for one hour on my new novel outline. It is the 22nd day of my 100 days of writing challenge and I have written a little bit over 7 and a half hours.

D'oh.

But you know what? I changed my focus and it allows nanowrimo, so I am not worried about getting my hours up. I mean, I do have to write 50k words in November. If I write 1ooo words in an hour, that's 50 hours of writing in only one month, less than 1 1/2 hours per day. And I would still have the rest of October and December to get my hours.

Okay, so it might still be a challenge, given my September/October so far, but it is doable.

You realize of course the biggest challenge to writing is never the actual writing. It's showing up to the page. The biggest challenge to being an artist is not the art, it's the living breathing thinking struggling artist herself.

That's why so many artist/writers/actors/musicians etc have been notoriously crazy/drunken/egomaniacal/strung out. I think they self medicate or often get overwhelmed.

The demons are on the inside, and you have to get through them to get to the page, sometimes.

But it's okay. It really is. The demons are only as scary as the power we give them.

Haha. I didn't understand how this post went where it did, and then I looked back at the pages from the altered book.

Paper Pills. Little odds and ends of thoughts. I want. Nothing/All. The whole universe in the word.

It's still a little abstract, this post.

I'm okay with that.

The Memories of Art

Williamsburg, Brooklyn; A Journey/Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
An Altered Book
Mixed Media, 2003

chapter 2: Hands

the words here (and they are the actual text of the original book) say
the hands/shoulders/ears/eyes/hands/face./body/feet/hands eyes/ shiver/hands/eyes/hands

the "read me" pocket has words on a twisted thread and the words say (in the tiniest letters possible, I don't know how I wrote them so small):

how to make a dream real?
a real dream?
How to make a dream real?
dream real?
make it real
make it real.

It's been many years since I made this artist book. And it's kind of interesting to look back on it. I am not "in" the place I was when I made it, and I don't really know what my intention was here, but I remember it, and I remember it fondly. That time of life. The explorations. The freedom. That me.

Interestingly, I was looking back at my journal from about a month ago, and the same thing happened. The interesting part is that a month ago, I still had swine flue, was terribly stressed out and was trying to pack up my stuff and get ready for a move, all the while hoping we could pull out a new job and a better move, and never managing. Really always feeling like I could never do all that I "should" do and always feeling like I was falling short.

So while I was drawing in my journal, it seems as if I captured the best parts of my life and let the stresses and illnesses and blues fall away. I looked back and I said, wow, that was a nice time. However when I was living it, how often did I look around and say, wow, this is a nice time?

I'm not sure what the lesson here is. That maybe I should accept my life, in all its chaos, and embrace the beauty that is there. I keep trying at this and keep failing, thus adding to that stress. Which probably means I am not doing the zen thing quite right. Well. There's a reason why there aren't little buddhas running around the streets of every town. It's HARD to be zen and live in the moment.

Maybe the lesson to be learned is that art is a way to understand, to transform the life that we are living. Maybe art can find a way to distill the living. I think that's what it should be. For me, anyway. I suppose my art is pretty autobiographical in nature. My illustrations of my outfits are a straight journal of my days, as are the drawings of the little leaves and twigs and flowers my kids give me. But the more abstract pieces, the collages, the doodles, these also serve as a memoir of my days. And so do the flying girls. These are a journal of my internal life. Even when I simply sit and paint a scene out my window... if I look at that painting years later, I am sucked right back to the time of the painting and I am there, again.

It's very interesting.

When I was a kid and studying art along with all the other kids, we had a pat answer about what art was. The purpose of art. Every class, every year of my HS education asked this question. But I didn't know. I didn't understand. I didn't understand WHY I was painting or WHAT I wanted to paint. I didn't understand what the point of it was for me.

I am very thankful for my education as an artist when I was so young, but it is life that taught me what art really was for me. I'd say I was probably 27 before I started sharing my internal world in my art. And everything I experienced in life added to the meaning.

And the meaning is still developing, still growing.

Huh. This is not where I meant to go with this post. I think I was going to say something about writing my post while the kids were sitting right here, watching Max and Ruby, so that when nap/quiet time came around, I could actually do my writing work, my 100 hours, my novelling, my brainstorming, my revising. But the old altered book took over my head space and hijacked my post.

This is kind of why I like using art work in all my blog posts. It adds something to the meaning of the words. It gives it a different tilt, a different perspective.

I like throwing dissimilar things together and seeing what comes from the collision. Speaking of... I think I'll do that with my werewolf girl story. Taking an old, unfinished novel, an old unread short story, and the idea of the paranormal werewolf story and smoosh them into something.

Well, the kids have decided I've written too long without paying attention to them, so I've got to go back to the day job and get the munchkins some lunch.

Old Work, New Work, HO-O-OWL!

Williamsburg, Brooklyn; A Journey/Winesburg, Ohio by Sherwood Anderson
Altered Book, Mixed media
2003

So I was off line for a while and did some moving. We are still in transition, planning the move to California, but delayed due to situations that did not pan out as they should have. Now, the kids and I are living with my mom and they will have some good fun before we go off across the country.

I however, am completely off my feed and no amount of Nick Jr can make it right.

I haven't written in a couple of weeks, nor have I painted. But I have been doing some thinking.

What I am posting here today, in the way of art is actually an altered book I created in the fall of 2003. Oh so long ago. A whole lifetime ago. The year I quit teaching and went back to waitressing and bartending, but before I met Sean and had kids. And certainly before our lovely recession.

It was the first time I really went deep into art, into one specific project instead of jumping around. I was given this book and then decided to alter it. I was guided only by trying to find a way to fit the chapter headings into my life as it was. Everything else was pretty intuitive and when I started out, I had no idea what I would be doing.

This is the first chapter. There are quite a few other chapters. I don't know if this is my favorite chapter, but it is where I started so I thought maybe I'd just show it in order. It's called "The Book of the Grotesque." Don't ask me. I just went with it and don't know if it makes sense. It's not really supposed to make sense, I guess. Or perhaps it's about making sense of things.

Maybe it's a good thing for me to post about, as I am in a period of trying to make sense of things. What with the transition and the uncertainty about the future. I've been wondering how I was going to focus on certain projects.

For one, my 100 day project of writing 100 hours in the last 100 days of 2009. Well, I meant to do it for my current novel that needs to be rewritten, but I don't really feel like I have the focus and extended time to really craft a finely tuned draft. So you know what I've decided? I'm going to do nanowrimo and write myself a whole new novel. Yup. It's going to have NOTHING to do with my current book. I need something right now that doesn't demand something of me. Something to just for fun.

Yes. I like to speed write novels for fun. I may be weird, but there it is. Rewriting is so much more difficult for me.

So I'm going to start outlining and brainstorm this werewolf novel in my head. Yes I am.

Sometimes I feel like I have a deadline to rush to get certain projects done, when the only one giving me a deadline is me.

When nanowrimo is over, I'll want to get away from the new novel and can go back to revision of number one.

Screw it. I'm going to do what I want to do instead of what I "should" do.

Woohoo.

Howl.

Now, what shall I do with my werewolf girl?

Hey. If you want to do nanowrimo, too, sign up and write 50 thousand words towards your new novel in November. It's fun, and no matter how far you get in your goal, you'll be farther along than you would have if you hadn't tried. There's still time to brainstorm and outline that fantastic idea that's been in your head for so long... and not too much time to think about what it all means before you enter into the thick of the furious writing. Come and play. And thank Marta for helping me to decide.

I'm Back

Hey there!

Long time no post.

Sorry about that. I had some internet/computer issues and could not for the life of me get access.

It's fixed now, but I had to spend my day taking care of business, so nap time is now over and I have to go make dinner and I don't have the time to do a real post.

I just wanted to leave a note saying I was okay and I will be back with a real post soon.
:)

Back Alley Way, After the Kids Go to Bed

Back Alley Way, After the Kids Go to Bed

Day 8 of the 100 Hours of Writing in 100 days Creativity Challenge.
One HALF HOUR this morning again. 4.5 hours total. 3.5 hours behind.

UH OH The deficit is getting worse.

Something needs to be addressed here.

I started writing with good intentions but had to stop. Why? Because there were kids who were demanding my attention and I was simply unable to focus any longer. I said to myself, once I make lunch I can write a bit more. I said, once the girl goes down, I can write a bit. I said, once I entertain the boy or once I respond to this email/twitter/IM or once I prep dinner or.... well, now it turns out the girl does not want to sleep any more and I didn't get a drawing done for this post and I didn't get any extra writing done, and now I know dinner must be made and i know once dinner is achieved it's about wrapping everything up and putting kids to bed and then, well, then I will take the garbage out to the dumpster and I will look at a view similar to the above photos (although a little darker, now. Every night a little darker) and I will be too tired to write.

Okay. So let's say instead of being after bedtime and looking down the alley at the sunsetting, let's pretend we are standing out in that brick lined alley and taking a deep breath of the air that smells like flowers and lime and the heat has spilled out of the sky and the shadows are rising and we can just be. Just be in the moment.

Let's be in the day for this moment.

Release the have tos and the expectations.

What do you want to do?

I want to finish this novel.

What do you need to do to finish this novel?

I need to sit down and write every day. I need to commit. I need to focus on the grand shape of the thing and the details of the words. I need to sculpt it. I need to live it. I need to love it.

What is getting in the way of doing that?

Organizing my time. Prioritizing that time. Sticking to my guns no matter how tired I am or how I feel I need to "relax". The kids still come first, and there are some things, even some big projects I need to commit to, but there are some pastimes that I use to distract myself from living the life I want to live. The main thing that is getting in my way is the internet.

How can you take that obstacle out of your way so you can live the life you want to live.

I think I need to give myself a budget for the internet. And I think I need to stick to it. Perhaps not turn on the internet at all until I've written my hour. That's tough, because I need to check my email at least... don't I???

Do I? Can I wait until noon to check my mail? Or rather, until 11:30 when I make the kids their lunch? Can I avoid Facebook, twitter, etsy, flickr and those other addictive sites? Can I wait until noon to peruse my blog reader?

I need to cut out the chatter. I am absolutely distracting myself with busy work for much of the time. I'm doing it on purpose, too. Pretending an intention to write, but really know I'm just going to surf the web and search for something new to fill my head with, instead of the thing I really want to give my attention to.

I need to spend more time breathing in the place where I am, and less time trying to catch ahold of some sort of invisible wave, trying to get somewhere, all the time. Trying to fill every moment. Trying to multitask every minute.

I think I should try some more of that nothing, too. Remember the nothing. And then continue on with the everything. Find the fear, and then release it to find the meaning. Choose the dream, and then let go of the things the clutter the path.

What is getting in the way of your dreams? What is blocking you from taking those steps down that path?

Make It Dangerous or It's Not Worth Doing

Make it Dangerous or it's Not Worth Doing
pen, Pitt Artist Pen, Paper, 8x5"

Day 6/100 in 100 days
30 minutes :( 3hours and 56 minutes totall since beginning.

So I'm behind in my revision hours. A little over 2 hours behind my goal. Ugh. It's really a struggle to make my hours of writing time.

And it's not that I don't have time. I spend time browsing on line or reading or watching tv.

It's that....

Oh goodness gracious!

I'm AFRAID.

Of course it is.

And I did not plan today's drawing because of this revelation, I just had the revelation this instant. I mean, I knew there was a connection between Fear and writing/art. I also thought it was a good hint for writing a novel... to up the stakes, to offer some danger for your characters, other wise, well, it's just boring.

And I knew that it is dangerous for me to attempt this revision, to FINISH this novel, because this is what I really want, what I have always wanted and that means the stakes are terribly high for me to make a success of it. But what if I can't do it? What if I give up and never finish. Even worse, what if I do write my novel and finish my drafts and it SUCKS. What if I am not as good in reality as I am in my head?

I don't think it is ever as good in reality as it is in our imagination, in art or in life... and that's because there is always possibility, there is always freedom, there is always the concept of perfect in our dreams, but reality puts everything on the line.

Once we put something down on paper (metaphorically or literally) we are stuck with what we've done, who we are, and the choices we make. We have to let them live their own lives, be their own thing and they are evidence of who we really are inside. Not dreams, reality. Not potential. Evidence. Not perfect... imperfect.

Oh I am afraid of finishing my novel. Of not being good enough. Of putting my money where my mouth is and having it be quite a few bucks short of the price of admission.

So I use my normal excuses to avoid writing. Too busy. Too tired. No time. My brain is not working well today. Can't focus. I must be coming down with something because my head hurts. I need to clean my desk/make dinner/pack boxes/draw an inspirational quote. My favorite show is coming down and I won't have enough time before it. Oh it's too late now I'm too tired it's bedtime forget writing tonight. It's too hard.

But in the past, when I have uprooted those excuses and sat down to work, they have almost always evaporated into the creative work and the words. I have frequently discovered, past bedtime, that if I take my laptop to bed, I can whip out an hour of work and find my mind zooming through problems I thought I was too tired to hack. Or if I commit to only 15 minutes, I end up going for one hour, two hours. Sometimes just 15 minutes, but the words come and they add up.

What's the lesson here?

Follow the fear.

The fear tells you where there is danger. The danger tells you where there is something to lose. When there is something to lose, there is also something to gain.

When I'm scared of something lately, when I realize that it is FEAR holding me back, that is when I have to make the commitment to tackle it.

Because I want those dreams. These high stakes are the fulfillment of everything I have been working towards my whole life. This is dangerous because this is really, really

Important.

Something and Nothing

Something I Doodled
Pitt Artist Pen, Pen, paper
9/26/09

Day 5 of 100 in 100 Creative Challenge: Writing til the End of 2009
4 hours 39 minutes. page 10, mostly new writing. A little revision.

I am still behind on my writing hours. But that's okay. Remember, in order to build up to a habit, one has to start slowly. One has to expect relapses. One has to allow oneself to be imperfect to get those muscles going.

I have this new idea that maybe I should write for one and a half hours every day, as it doesn't look like I will be able to write every last single day. So to make up for the days I miss, I could tack on another half hour of writing time.

I forget to check with my bosses if that was okay with them.

Apparently, after I hit one hour thirteen minutes writing time this morning (including breaks for snacks, hugs, diapers, etc) boss number one decided I'd had enough writing time and it was time to pay attention to her.

Commence whining. Crying. Yelling. Cries of "kiss my boo boo! kiss my boo boo" when there was no boo boo in sight.

The boy enjoys his adventures in the garden, and his tv shows, and his imaginative games of superhero or dinosaur or robot, and his planning of aquariums or building playgrounds or hosting parties and plays well by himself... but the girl, she wants mama. She will not be satisfied by running around making jet sounds in my general vicinity.

Tensions rise when two different characters have different desires and goals. This is true for fiction and this is true for mommying. I'm okay as long as every body is doing what I want them to do and it doesn't interfere with what I want to do. If I have no particular goals for the next few minutes, there's no tension, but if my goal is to write for ten more minutes and the girl's goal is for me to stop writing RIGHT NOW and give her attention even if she doesn't have anything in particular that she wants from me... well, her screaming gets louder, and so does mine.

In the end, I said, okay. I will stop writing. But I also told her that I needed a break, because now the tension was so high in my head I needed a time out. (note to self. When writing tense scenes in my novel, do not stop the action to mull over the beauty of, say, the sky, or ponder over the things that led to this point. Stay with it. Tension in a mommy is bad. Tension in a novel is good.)

Interestingly, I decided to practice some nothingness, an idea that is floating around blogland because of Jamie Ridler's Joy Diet bookclub. I don't have the book yet, but I thought I'd practice a few minutes of nothing, despite feeling that a triple shift, no help stay at home mom doesn't really get the opportunity to do nothing without being on duty. I went out onto the front porch, with the girl wailing about how much she misses mommy (I roll my eyes) and sat down with my coffee to look at the lizards dancing and the hear the squirrels chittering and feel the breeze as it rustled the live oak branches. It was nice out there. Cool and shady, and the cries from behind the screen door faded away, for the most part, with but a screech here and there to remind me they were still kicking.

So, ten or so minutes later, calm and free of tension from that simple ten minutes of not having to DO anything, I cam back inside gave the kids some hugs or water or whatever little thing they wanted. I checked my email. I made some lunch. I prepped dinner. I put a girl to nap. I gave the boy a snack. I took a photo and now I am blogging.

In the end, I decided nothing is good. Pushing for something all the time isn't necessary. Maybe I'll try more nothing tomorrow and get more somethings done as a consequence.

Cake and Writing. Celebrate the Messiness of It All

Cake
acrylic on paper, 5x8"

2/100 1 hour 6 minutes. Page 5 of third draft of Mythos. All new writing.

Sorta.

I cheated a little. I didn't write anything at all yesterday. No I didn't.

After a day of running after kids and trying to get stuff done and dealing with other stuff and organizing stuff and wrangling stuff and feeling like I was doing it all rather badly, I had not much left in me once the kids went to bed.

I said, shoot, forget it. I'll make up the time tomorrow, although I was kind of planning to skip the whole hour and make it up whenever.

Then, before I went to bed I checked my email and my Facebook and there were all sorts of wonderful people rooting me on and joining in.

Damn you people.

Knowing as I know how easy it is to fall behind in those self made goals and poop out before you get very far at all, knowing how easy it is to forget that you really really wanted it in the face of how hard it is, and knowing that people were watching me, dammit, I woke up this morning and got back to work. Last time I started doing challenges I remember having this problem. I ended up counting my day as nap to nap, not midnight to midnight because it worked for me. So, I thought I'd go back to my old schedule. BUT... the boy no longer takes naps, and I have so much to do while the girl sleeps. So I had to find some time within my already busy day to get the writing done. So I did.

Yes. I wrote my three pages this morning. Not in the loveliness of silence and time to myself where the brain is functioning and and uninterrupted. No. I wrote in the chaos of post breakfast children running around the house pretending to be dinosaurs or cats or superheroes or whatever it was they were pretending to be.

I wrote with Sesame Street singing about lightning bugs in the background and little girls tugging on my skirt and boys yelling to be let back in the house from making mud pies in the garden, and having tantrums about how there was no way in the world that he could take off his own shirt by himself even though he did.

And I kept writing when the boy came up and asked what all the words on the page were.

Well, no. I stopped then. And I stopped to get the glass of water. And I stopped to let the boy in. And I stopped to change a diaper and put on shoes and clean up the spill and hand out goldfish, and do a time out or two and praise for accomplishments and hug for booboos.

But I kept going back to work.

I know this is not the ideal situation in which to write a book. I know that I should probably get up at 4am (!!!!) before the kids wake and just get at it, but my brain does not function that early and yipes.

I didn't know if it would work. I've never tried to write while the kids were running around the house, only during naps or on rare days off. But you know what?

I did it.

It worked.

I thought for sure that I couldn't write while the kids were howling around me. I am not speaking euphemistically. AWOOOO! And yet. The howling did not stop the writing.

I could indeed write.

I'm a little amazed. I wasn't expecting it.

And there is yet another "I can't" that has been tossed away. You mean, it's possible to write a novel while watching a toddler and a preschooler without any help at all? You mean it's possible to be an artist and a stay at home mom? You mean it's possible to get that mommy brain back, or keep something of my pre-kid dreams for myself, or be an artist and not be a totally selfish, crazy lunatic?

I guess when we break down the boxes and definitions of what it means to be an artist, or a mom, or an American, or a human being, well, perhaps a lot of the can'ts become possible. Oh, it may look like a holy mess, without out those neat categories and separations, but it is possible.

And yes. I also painted that cake this morning. in honor of the Wayne Thiebaud postcard of cakes my little one dug out of my desk this morning while I was still waking up and left in the bathroom for me to find. Also in honor of my mom's birthday a couple days ago, and the kid's desire to throw a party, any party.

So AWOO to you. Celebrate yourself for something you didn't think you could do, and once attempted, found out you could.

Time to finish my book (oh no!) More days of 100

Time to finish my book (oh no) More days of 100
gesso, acrylic, marker, pen on paper. Journal.

1/100: 40 minutes. page 2 of third draft of Mythos. All new writing.

Well, I made myself write last night, an hour or so before midnight. I didn't get one hour in, but at this point, at the beginning of my process, I am okay with that.

After writing novel/learning how to write novels/trying to write novels now for... oh 23 fricking years (what? really? 23 years? why do you not have ONE finished, revised book?) one of the things I learned is that, in order to develop a writing practice from zero, you have to be gentle with yourself in the beginning.

If you don't write, it's hard to all of a sudden write 5000 words in a day. If you don't write, it's hard to just jump right in from nothing and be actively in the middle of WRITING THE NOVEL.

Just like my 4yo who says he can't write the letter A ("ican'tican'tican't") and throws his chalk across the room when I show him how it's done, you have to allow yourself to be a beginner. G thinks that he is a big boy, so he should know how to read. Yes. He actually said this. I told him that learning to read is part of becoming a big boy, and this is one of the things he can learn as a getting bigger boy.

I tell him, "but you know all your letters and even know how to pick out some words, and that is great for being a 4 year old."

And he says, "but I only know animals. I can't read. I can't write an A. I never write an A."

Well, it was hard to get him over his tantrums and get him to write his clumsy A... which he gets so frustrated with because it is still not perfect. But we did it. And tomorrow, we'll try again until he learns more confidence. And then we'll figure out A, and we'll figure out B, and the C and you know the way that story goes.

And tonight, when the kids are sleeping, I will try again to see what I can do with my novel. I will start where I am and I will allow myself to be imperfect and to not know the answer to revision or to writing. I will learn what I need as I go. I will gain confidence in my ability to revise. To rewrite. To shape my novel.

I will get into the practice of writing. I will put down my words one by one. I will engage daily in the practice of revising.

For 100 days. And at the end of it, I will look back and discover how much I have done. Maybe I will even have a finished, final draft of a book.

In reality, it's not talent or inspiration or ability that separates artists from non artists... it's commitment. That's why I'm doing this hundred days. I need to commit to this book, regardless of the other things going on in my life. I might even be offline for some time during these hundred days. But I'll still be working on my novel.

What do you need to develop, to learn, to commit to?