Resolutions + my favorite things = 2014

I have never made serious resolutions although I do have an ongoing checklist of things I need to get better at or at the very least find a better way to do. The sudden (yes it took me by surprise) arrival of 2014 gave me little time to think about making positive changes for the year ahead so here I am almost two weeks in just getting around to determining that a few writer-home-office resolutions might be in order.

Combine my enthusiasm for the onset of another year with a list of my favourite things to help make that happen and the outcome is the following version of the famous Oprah-style ‘my favorite things’ minus the free giveaways and car. Although some of my noted faves here include freebies you can access so it is not all sad that the Oprah giveaway shows are gone like the Detroit balanced budget.

One of my key resolutions is to be somewhat more desk-organized. A home office and way too many ‘jobs’ can wreak havoc on limited space combined with the hoarder-need to surround myself with all my favorite things that give me inspiration. My small but efficient office space (okay yeah it spills over to other rooms) is home to a wall of hundreds of books antique and new, 6 inch thick old hard cover dictionaries, a typewriter collection displayed around the antique inkwells, pens, paperweights, vintage office collectibles, an antique brass and glass claw piano stool resting spot for an antique autoharp, mouth organ, and  a guitar resting along side, vintage wooden letter trays, oak library card drawers and  paper sorter, and even a giant two foot tall 3 inch thick hard bound newspaper morgue volume of the original December 1940 The New York SUN (don’t  ask). Around all this is my tools, phone, recorder, cameras, printer, scanner, iPod doc, desk lamp (green glass banker of course), a few lap tops, iPod, iPad, iPhone, and then add to the mix my many many magazines both sorted into file boxes, clips binders and piled around (as I write magazine fortunately this is both an allowable obsession and a true write-off expense). Now kick it up a notch with the all-writers-have-it unhealthy addiction to stationery, paper,  notebooks, journals, file folders (orange), note cards, markers, pens and pencils, and things can get a little tight in a small space.

My 2014 plan is to continue to love all the things I love and to finally use all those things I have been saving earmarked as too special to use - leather journals, good pens, fancy paper, monogrammed paper clips and even coloured printer ink when the mood hits me. My favourite things/get organized resolution starts now. Feel free to check out any of these faves and let me know how they stack up, or if I am missing out on something more FUN-ctional you might want to let me in on.

1.      First up on the use it lists has to be my many decorative (Paris themed) colourful storage boxes piled around the room – with the addition of cute custom labels these will be handy to file away some of the clutter of colured index cards, stickers, business cards, overflowing pencil piles and so much more.

 2.    My pens and pencils might seem out of control to a non-writer but on the flip side might seem lacking to a writer but keeping dozens of my favourite pencils on hand and sharpened to a point at all times is a must with my pick being billed as the world’s most comfortable, the Dixon Tri-Conderoga HB2 with a triangular shape perfect for endless doodling writing.

3.     On the list of too special to use journals and notebooks check out the Moleskin Evernote SMART Notebook combined with the Evernote app to take your hand written notes to your computer files in a snapshot.

4.     No writer’s office is complete without at least one or three vintage typewriters, one of my favourites being the classic minty green (not the actual famous Jack Kerouak) Hermes 3000 – a gem and types like new. A little much for a coffee shop writing-date when my iPad and keyboard cover suffice.

5.      My new favourite (as in free) software tools to organize my writing life have proven to be invaluable this past fall when life cranked up my work life in a good way. For accounting simplicity, web based, easy invoicing and simple bookkeeping check out Waveapp – the free version is more than enough power to drive a home office.

6.     The other great free software tool that has cleaned up my act in a big way is the project software insightly. This powerful free tool not only lets me break down my clients into simple project lists it then keeps track of all my assignments, task at hand, scheduling and lets me attach all the emails related to each project with a simple send out of any email.

7.     My lust for leather and my need for a functional briefcase/knapsack has sent me looking in a million directions for one serviceable bag – of the way many collected over the years none seem to serve well although my now vintage favourites have always been my Queros collection (yes I have had a few) – so on my list of 2014 things to own is a new, as in from this millennium, Queros leather bag (or two) … currently considering a combo of small briefcase  and one great messenger bag purse or maybe a knapsack.

8.    Not to take away from the love of reading an actual book but surprisingly one of my faves that has me reading way more simply because it is so simple to always have a library in my pocket is the lovely little KOBO MINI. Not as fancy as its more expensive bigger versions but it is a perfect time and space saver for an easy ongoing reading and anything that lets me read more when I step away from my desk is a good thing.

9.     Not that footwear has much to do with writing but for those who work from home and rarely wear shoes (let alone pants) I have a new best, will own them forever and travel with them always fave that is really the slipper of boots. PAKEMS are designed by a brilliant woman in Colorado with end of the day comfort in mind for skiers or hikers, but these après-ski booties are the best ever not-shoes a writer can own. High top or low and plain or print the design is amazing and my pink-plaid Pakems make my feet smile.

10.  Lastly, limiting my picks to ten, is my goal of not so many hard copy magazines underfoot in files and a commitment to read more of my magazines on my iPad. Many apps are out there to help bring them into your e-reader fast so I will check out the few recommended such as Zineo, the Kobo magazines app, and more – if you have a favourite one please do let me know and help me save about a zillion trees from my office recycle piles.

So whatever works for your home office embrace it and remember to quit saving all those oh-so-special goodies for an occasion – the occasion is now, 2014, the year of using all your favourite things. As one of my dear friends says, “Gotta use your stuff!”

Happy New Year!
Michelle

Ps … one addition that has nothing to do with organization and resolutions but everything to do with New year’s celebrating, no matter what time of year, is my favourite find beverage of Writers Tears Irish Whiskey. Folklore has it that when Irish writers cry they have tears of whiskey. If you truly want to embrace this writer’s drink of choice there is even a Writers Tears Writers Club.

A Passion for writing ...

“I can never get people to understand that poetry is the expression of excited passion, and that there is no such thing as a life of passion any more than a continuous earthquake, or eternal fever..."  Letters and Journals of Lord Byron 

Passion instills creative self-energy of unique qualities. To be passionate about what one does, be it writing, painting, cooking, accounting, engineering, or whatever the task, one has to be one with the doing part of being. It is not simply enough to be the writer but one has to ‘do’ writing, and do it in a passionate way.

Writing comes from deep within, some would argue that it might even come from with-out, a beyond, from some energetic interruption from the universe gifted on to the page merely passing through the writer. However one discovers their words, the lack of desire in doing so makes the job of writing just that, a job. Any professional who is passionate about what they do will relay the same message, the lesson of being in the moment and being alive in what one sets out to accomplish on a daily basis. Drone is a negative low energy term that can be the calm opposite of passion if one allows a routine process to overtake the energy flow. Wandering one’s way through a job, meandering and biding time, is not invoking nor engaging your mind with your spirit. Your mind is a powerful tool, arguably your best tool regardless of your profession. For a writer it is everything. Our minds become our go-to-place on a moment by moment, word by word basis to get the writing job done.

The energy that comes from creating one’s work from inside your own head is indescribable to a non-writer and shadows a mystery and romance around the world of a writing lifestyle. That energy when coupled with passion creates a powerful obsessive-like process and when the two are in sync writing becomes a very crazed way to make a living.

It is not always simple but all writing be it journalism, research, technical, non-fiction, poetry, novel, script and many many kinds, all come back to one thing – that of the words that must come together on the paper. Those words must filter through the mind of the writer, process themselves onto the page and then carry a reader’s attention. The most banal newspaper article to the most complex big-screen script must all go through the same process. Without a passion the writer does not only the reader a disservice, but also one to themselves. Without the intensity of passion, the homework and research, the writing process and the final outcome are lack luster and one might as well trade in your pencils and stand behind a counter asking ‘do you want fries with that?”

Why write if you don’t bring a fire to the page? Always pack along your passion when you gather up your tools to write. Carry that ardent passion through the entire experience of creating and it will magically find its way onto the page every single time.

Write always (with passion),

Michelle

Serial writing ...

Sounds more diabolical than it is … ‘serial’ in the publishing sense whether one considers it an adjective (consisting of, forming part of, or taking place in a series: “a serial publication”) or as a noun (a story or play appearing in regular installments on television or radio in a magazine or newspaper).There are many reasons for serial writing but the obvious is the shift in our cyber-connected attention spans and the cultural shift to shorter instant information. A desire to write a full length novel as a first time author and the need to grow a readership in the changing face of technology become two very different goals. Finding the path that leads to traditional publishing via a non-traditional way to get there is exactly what I am willing to try.

Having sat a professional development panel session last month in Toronto during Magazines Canada’s annual conference, MagNet13 on “New Game, New Rules: The Changing Face of DIY Publishing” I was inspired to try a new approach to growing the readership I need along while developing the most solid proven storyline for my fiction manuscript novel length project. As a publishing industry professional I see the struggle of traditional methods in the ever changing shift of non-traditional methods needed to work towards my personal writing goal of a hard copy best seller fiction novel. A lofty goal in a somewhat deflated industry changing by the minute.

The old stigma around self-publishing, electronic possibilities and shooting one in the writer-foot by testing other options while also shopping for a tradition book deal are not the issues they once were. Many writers of all levels and fame, published or not, are stretching their skills and venturing into new publishing waters to discover where their readership is happily hanging out while favoring and promoting that which excites them to read.

The session speakers brought a business mix that only a few years back would never have been sharing a panel on the future of non-traditional publishing. John Degen, Executive Director of The Writers’ Union of Canada, Mark Leslie Lefebvre, Director of Self-Publishing and Author Relations at Kobo, and Allen Lau, CEO and Cofounder of Wattpad. The trio offered up a hopeful glimpse at a changing word landscape but most exciting for me as a writer in development was the concept presented by Allen Lau of Wattpad. This is such an innovative idea that even Mark Leslie Lefebvre of Kobo is using the Wattpad app to grow his own storyline readership. The serial writing / serial reading concept of Wattpad simply put is a platform for writers and readers to hang out together, read and write alongside one another and grow a great read, driven by an open dialogue writer to reader as the words flow.

I am now up-an-at-em on Wattpad presenting my manuscript in serial fashion to experiment with the open concept of growing my readership while I write towards what they want to read. Their feedback and cross promotion will become vital tools as I further develop my storyline. The final novel will not necessarily be the Wattpad path as my personal goal, for now, lies in the traditional print world. Having said that, I am open to all possibilities and my journey is in the writing, but the thought that I can take that path along with the reader in an ongoing conversation is a very intriguing raw concept I am willing to embrace.

Visit my profile, read along and dialogue as I grow my storyline for Shunned on Wattpad at http://www.wattpad.com/story/6735906-shunned-a-mennonite-prairie-saga

Write always,     Michelle

Hallway commute …

There are so many good reasons to love working from a home office. There are an equal number of bad reasons to not love working from a home office. Depending on the day and the project one will outweigh the other. One plus of a home office lifestyle is the near clothing optional benefit of the job and no big budget required to be fashion ready every morning, but what is a benefit to you is not always one to your friends or house mate who might come to wish that you remember to shower and dress on a regular basis. No rush hour traffic another plus as you wander your way down the hall in your fuzzy robe and slippers with a coffee in hand to arrive at the office, but again the down fall is that the more you stay in the more you hate to tackle traffic or long drives and totally see how being a recluse shut in is not all that bad, and maybe that is not a good thing.

Even though you deal with people all day, virtual people and virtual colleagues it does get to feel much like having a string of imaginary friends and again not necessarily a socially healthy trait and offers little to connect with face to face later when cocktailing with real humans after hours. Your pets will love you home all day but again not always a plus for you as you tend to come to like them better than humans over time and can communicate on a pet-mind-meld level better than vocally to most.

home office perks

One would think that being a professional communicator, a word wizard of sorts, would make you a vibrant chatty social being but the downside is that you have quiet isolation all day and the more you write the less you want to speak. An introverted writer becomes almost a self-fulfilling oxymoron and one quickly imagines in those all too quiet times of desperate word block and harsh self discipline how writer angst can arrive in the form of wanting to have their ashes fired out of a cannon when all is passed, Hunter S Thompson style.

 Lots of alone time to think can be a blessing and a curse all at the same time. Solitary confinement is a form of punishment in some (prison) circles but for a writer it is a welcomed fact of life most days and a horrible cruel fate on others. I tend to like it when I have no real schedule and merrily follow inspiration but give me the pressure of a deadline and I quickly resent that I am alone in my office trying to self-brainstorm to come up with a good idea.

There are no celebrated little perks such as casual Friday or pizza day, although there is often a waft of microwave popcorn in the air.  No little office antics or shenanigans and no sleeping with the boss rumors. Little interaction makes for a tad bit of crazy making some days and singing out loud or skipping to the laundry room are just some of the small pleasures you incorporate into your work day office-party of one. Knocking off early to catch happy hour can also have its downfalls and a total new writer-appreciation of the alcohol genius of Hemmingway.

The juxtaposition of the free flowing words and no one to listen seems a cruel hoax on a writer isolated from the buzz of the world they seclude themselves away from to write about. Just know in your isolated writer lifestyle that you are not alone.

Write always,

Michelle

A place to write ...

    “A women must have money and
        a room of her own if she is to write”
 
                ... Virginia Woolf, from A Room of One’s Own

A writer is always writing even when there is no pen or paper in sight. In the grocery, driving, sitting at a movie, an evening out with friends, lying awake in the wee hours, walking the dog, cooking a great meal and just about everywhere else. The creative mind is always churning and processing some thought that would make a great story.

The discipline comes into play when one can take those constant inspirations onto a piece of paper. For me that does not mean simply scribbling them somewhere, jotting an idea or a character sketch into a notebook when the idea hits, or making mental notes to someday use an enlightening scenario in a future story, but rather it means truly writing the words. Not the kind of writing on the fly onto loose pages, but the process of sitting down to gather the scribbles and notes and begin creating the whole from the parts.

The place from which a writer writes is as important as what they write. The private personal space where the surroundings are inspirational, where the surface feels right, where thoughts can flow unedited and safely to the page without judgement or a second eye constantly peering into the process is key. It is the place from which you create and you need it to be as right as any other profession needs a workplace, an artist and a studio, a mechanic and a garage, a doctor and a clinic, a writer and a desk.

It does not have to be an elaborate antique desk oozing in history, or a sanitized industrial-like clean surface from which to create, but it does have to be private, your own, and tucked away from the distractions of the world. Perhaps you don’t even have a desk and instead an old leather valise full of your rambling pages which you cart to your favourite spot in the world to sit and write. Maybe for you your desk is under a tree somewhere in a quiet park. What will work is that you create your place where you go to write every chance you get.

In this place, at your ‘desk’, you must respect and honour your platform, your easel, your palate from where your work flows. If you are inspired by personal items in your life surround yourself with them, your family pictures, your good-luck charms, your totems and mementos, your collections which bring you passion. Do not clutter the surface with distractions or negatives, leave your household bills and to do lists in another room away from the creative process and positive space of your writing. No emailing friends in between writing paragraphs and turn off your phone. Don’t play music if it distracts you, but blast it if it inspires you.
Create your ‘room of one’s own’ and an inspirational space for the words to flow.
Give yourself the gift of a place to write.

Write always,

Michelle

Write what you know ...

I struggle often with balance. Okay there I said it out loud, I admit it. Not that kind of stand on your tip toes, close your eyes and don’t fall over balance, but worse the kind where life gets in the way of what you know you should be doing. I should be writing. You know that feeling when tomorrow is going to be so great that you are too excited to sleep? Sometimes, some nights, that is how my own writing-imagination can keep me awake. My writer-self is too excited to sleep. The words that want out will not let me rest because that day has brought me so many great ideas to write about.
It is that passion that becomes a drive so forceful that it can get in the way of actually sitting down and writing. Harnessing that almost superpower to create and balancing the desire-to-write and the reality of finding a creative time and place can be as hard as learning to physically juggle. It takes practice. A juggler will tell you to just pick up any object and start – juggle your morning orange and apples, juggle your pencils, juggle the dog biscuits and your hair brushes, just do it.

MichelleGreysen dot com

The same has come to be true for me and words. I juggle a paid assignment, a magazine feature, blogging, copyright work, non-fiction book projects, fiction novels to short stories, poetry and the business writing side of researching and marketing all those avenues of revenue streams and creative outlets of a writing life. The subject matter in my writing projects and assignments covers a huge spectrum and I am often asked how do you decide what to write about? I usually jokingly quip that

stories find me but in actuality there is a lot of truth to that.

I truly believe that nurturing your will to write will be fed by what life brings you to write about. Jung aptly described it, as “That which is most personal is most common”.  Write what you know, write what is in your life and you will feed your passion for words with your life experiences. When I find I am struggling with writing it is often because I am not personally balancing who I am with what I do.
One of the best reads on writing I continue to enjoy over and over, is Stephen King’s bestseller, On Writing. King sets out to describe the ups and downs of the writing life by simply telling us not how he writes but rather how he lives and in those simplistic insights in some round-about way he offers endless valuable lessons on how to write. King unknowingly backs up my belief that there is some positive harmony in life and writing. A hundred pages into the book he speaks of his office space, his own desk, about the job and what he came to know:

“It starts with this: put your desk in the corner, and every time you sit down there to write, remind yourself why it isn’t in the middle of the room.  Life isn’t a support system for art.  It’s the other way around.”   Stephen King

Just write ... and write and write and write and write and ...

When one writes for a living, and one writes for love, and one writes like others breathe, there comes a time when you must shut out all that is not writing and take stock. I truly can say then when I am not able to write, or at least be in a mental state of writing, that I feel as if I am suffocating as I gulp, gasp, and choke my very soul to steal away some writing time in my day. There is never enough of both time and words.  I have thought a lot lately of all that gets in the way of my now too many writing projects piling up around me, a distraction all in themselves from the actually writing.  I see where the time has now come to hone it all into one focus, one goal, one single task. I simply need to write. I want to write it all, poetry, fiction, script, novel, short story, non-fiction, magazine freelance, book projects, corporate content development writing and oh so much more. The reality is I simply am a word junkie with obsessive compulsive a-holic-like tendencies and a desire to play with words on all levels. Not unlike a math scholar driven by formulas, or a musician that can’t leave the notes, or an archaeologist on an endless dig. The quest for words and the drive for the right words is a passion and a life’s’ work that now, for me, must be addressed.

Vintage Typewriters at Inktiques

Time has become my guide and is constantly butting in to remind my muse to hurry it along. I have to remind time that we are in a dance or sorts and that I am in the lead. But I also have to constantly remind myself of that and not get swept away on other tasks that interrupt my words. I know for me in order to write well I must write often, every day and sometimes all day and night. I must constantly move the words along, zero in on my many word projects and bring them to completion and beyond. Words can bury a writer but good words can free a writer. I deeply desire lately to write freely.

I will check back here often, daily perhaps, weekly other times, but enough to report back that my words are on task and to share the journey of writing. I welcome hearing from others who, like me, struggle with life getting in the way of the words.

Writing always,

Michelle