Clot Bey in Egyptian army uniform teaching the first modern Anatomy lesson at Abu-Zaabal, Egypt in 20 June 1829. Public domain.
Food for Thought – 157 Words
“Broccoli,” the student declared, gesturing toward the skeleton hanging from a wooden rack.
“Broccoli? You’re claiming broccoli killed this man?”
“Yes. That was my brother. He always told our mother if she made him eat his broccoli, he’d die. Last week he finally tried a piece to appease her and keeled over dead, instantly nothing but bones.”
The master physician raised his eyebrow and leaned back in his chair. “Interesting. Tell me then, how did the Moor on the table die?”
“Oh, that’s no Moor,” insisted the student. “That’s my neighbor, Rasheed.”
Both eyebrows shot up now. “Rasheed was not dark-skinned!”
“I know,” the student replied. “He overimbibed.”
“Overimbibed? You think this skin discoloration was the result of alcohol?”
“No. Sweets. His wife told me he ate an entire cake last night. She’d warned him too much would kill him. Guess she was right. What we have here is a clear case of death by chocolate.”
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Join us at Flash Friday Fiction to read superb short (really short) stories and perhaps pen one of your own!
I have a headache. The house needs cleaning. I’m grumpy. I feel as if everything I write sucks, particularly the story I’m working on. I want to bite people. The cats need snuggling. And so on and so forth.
But of course I’ve heard and read many, many things about successful writers over the past year or so. These two always leap out at me:
1) A professional is an amateur who never gave up. 2) A real writer sits her butt in the chair and writes every day, even when she doesn’t want to.
Today I don’t want to.
The good news is, it’s January, so I’m feeling freshly resolved to keep the commitments I’ve made to myself and to the Shenandoah Valley Writers Group, of which I am a proud member. I pledged to finish the NaNoWriMo novel I was working on in November, and I promised to write an hour every day on something, whether it was the book, this author blog, or journaling about mundane-alia (Facebook status updates do NOT count, however). So while I’d rather spend the day grouching and grumbling about chocolate withdrawal and lack of sleep and all the other things that could use my attention, I need to just shut up and type.
Shut up and type.
This job is a luxury – at least for right now. For if I do get published, I know I’ll be working to true deadlines, not just self-imposed ones. This job is a luxury. I’m doing it because I want to, because I get to, not because I have to. This job is a luxury – I’m not working 80+ hours a week trying to support my family, or digging through sewage pits, or cleaning porno booths, or any of the other many, many less-than-ideal jobs people do to earn a living.
And even those who are working in jobs they love, in careers they love, have off days. I’m sure there are many, many times doctors and lawyers and architects and professors and artists just want to spend the day in the theater, or sleeping on the couch, or listening to rap, or whatever tickles their fancy. Anything but working, even when they love their work.
It’s a matter of discipline. It’s a matter of practice. It’s a matter of self-control as well as impulse control. These are not my strong suits. Is it O.K. to admit that out loud?
This job IS a luxury, but it’s still a job, and one I have to do, day in and day out, if I want to make it a career instead of an occasional hobby.
The truth is, I LOVE writing. I love words coming together in ways that feel beautiful (at least to me), I love discovering what characters are going to do and say. I love language and phrasings and expressions and humor and wit. I love to write. I’m just not good at challenging the inertia and fear and self-doubt and, well, preference for ease that underlie attitudes like the one plaguing me today. Especially when a headache is pounding through my temples and sinuses.
But hey, look – in just admitting and writing about my desire NOT to write today, I’ve already put in time. I’m already sitting in this chair, already having to decide what will appear next on the screen, already debating what to work on after this writing-wise, and reminding myself that the ultimate goal, in writing as with so many other things, is progress. Not perfection. Just progress.
One step at a time. One word at a time. Just shut up and type.
Happy New Year! Or, as we Merlinians like to say, Happy Birthday Colin Morgan!
Anyhoo, here’s a list of links that caught my eye in the last month or two. I’d meant to post them earlier, but the holidays and family and presents and sickness and Facebook addiction… you know the drill.
1. The Period Is Pissed: Texting Made Our Plainest Punctuation Aggressive – Have you noticed this? I have. It’s amazing what the advent of texting has done to our language, most of which I consider ugly [cn u rd ths nw? & ths 2?]. It’s also amazing how much we/I rely on contextual cues to get tone/intention, many of which are lost when one distills communication down to a few sparse words. I walk around convinced everyone is pissed at me these days – and now, as this article points out, it doesn’t take exclamation points or ALL CAPS to make me feel that way, but rather a simple period.
2. Open Content Program from The Getty – I wholeheartedly approve of the movement to get more and more texts digitized, especially for those of us who would otherwise never get to see such items personally. From the Getty website: “The initial focus of the Open Content Program is to make available all images of public domain artworks in the Getty’s collections. Today we’ve taken a first step toward this goal by making roughly 4,600 high-resolution images of the Museum’s collection free to use, modify, and publish for any purpose.” Woo hoo!
3. Designer of the Bayeaux Tapestry Revealed – O.K., maybe this only resonates with other medievally-minded people, but I think this is pretty cool. In grad school we studied the Bayeaux tapestry and had a beautifully illustrated fold-out copy I loved to study. From the article: “The Bayeux Tapestry depicts the Norman Conquest of England in 1066, when Duke William of Normandy defeated the English king Harold Godwinson at the Battle of Hastings. The tapestry is considered to be a major artistic source for these events, although its origins remain a hotly debated mystery.” Who was the designer? Read the article to find out!
4. Sleep ‘Cleans’ The Brain of Toxins – Have you resolved to get more sleep this year? I almost added that to my list, since I’ve heard so much recently about lack of sleep contributing to weight gain [I must have a SERIOUS case of long-lasting insomnia], but then realized my screen addiction would undoubtedly cause me to break that resolution the very night I set it. Perhaps this article will get me back on track and lead to more shut-eye; we all need healthy sleep, for so many reasons.
5. Four Websites You Should Know About – Perhaps you’ve resolved to keep up more with current events and become a better informed citizen. Well, Organic Lifestyle Magazine has come up with four websites with which they say you should be familiar, “regardless of your political leanings, beliefs, or interests.” Do you agree with their choices?
6. 10 Words to Cut from Your Writing – Eek! I probably use all ten of these. Literally. Dude, I’ve gotta stop writing things like this. Maybe it’d make my writing, like, quite amazing, instead of the very stinky pile of stuff it often ends up being. I’ll think about it. Really.
7. Sound of Music Flash Mob – And just for fun, a little Do-Re-Mi flash to start to your New Year off right!
Do you make New Year’s Resolutions? I do. I love making them. I also love breaking them. It’s a time-honored ritual, and who am I to mess that up? But this year–this year I’d like to actually keep a few. I’m O.K. with tossing the old “lose 50 pounds” on there, knowing full well the chances of that happening are essentially nil. I’m not O.K. with not upping my commitment to my writing.
Apropos this time of year, my cousin recently sent me this article (she knows all about my “Make It & Break It” habit, I guess). In it author James Clear encourages us to focus less on setting goals, and more on creating systems of sustainable action that, while leading of course to increased achievement, are not the end in and of themselves. It’s the journey, not the destination, and by taking small steps every day, we’re making progress. Goals imply finality; systems are never-ending–but in a good way.
So here, at least, are my Writerly Resolutions, er, I mean Writerly Systems for 2014:
1. Write an hour every day. Maybe on a book. Maybe on a blog post. Maybe just scribbling on something never intended for others eyes. Whatever. Just write.
2. Blog 3 times a week. Because I *know* my 9 subscribers are breathless with anticipation over whatever I have to say, and also because it will feed into Writerly Resolution #1. (And hey, if you subscribe to my blog and get me up into the double-digits, I will be ecstatic! ;))
3. Read an hour every day. I call myself a bookworm. I certainly have an addiction to books. But, um, well, last year I didn’t read NEARLY as much as I should have, not in fiction, or non-fiction, or research. This will not do. So while I’m not claiming I’ll give up Facebook or Netflix or that blastedly addictive HayDay game, I am pledging that in between all that I will get in an hour of reading a day, at least – which hopefully will get me to my goal of 50 books this year, minimum.
4. Publish a book in 2014, whether by traditional or indie means. O.K., so this one is a goal. A BIG goal. But it’s an intentional one; I can keep dithering on my first book, A Man of Character, forever, doing edits and rearranging words, but in the dithering is hidden procrastination motivated by plain old fear. While revising and editing with the drive to improve the book is, of course, desirable, hiding behind revising and editing as an excuse not to research agents, craft that query letter, and send the sucker out is not.
Whew. O.K. There they are; 3 “systems” and 1 flat-out goal. What do you think? Reasonable? Unreasonable? Better than pledging to run a marathon and drop 100 pounds?
What are YOUR goals (er, uh, I mean ‘systems’) for 2014, writerly or otherwise?
“It’s lonely at the top”, they say. Oh yeah? Try being stuck out here on a damn lake in the middle of nowhere. Sure, they do their duty by me, occasionally coming out to reattach my arms or give me a new nose. No more carrots, though – the deer snatch them. Too bad; this current ‘nose’ hurts like a mother. And what’s with the evergreens on my head? I can’t tell if they’re crowning me with laurel or just giving me a really bad comb over.
Either way, I wish they’d stay. Frosty doesn’t know how good he had it, surrounded by kids all day.
I’d give anything to be able to follow these tracks, to head out and see where they lead. Instead I stand here, sentinel to nothing with no hope except to wait for the sun to melt me down. At least swimming with the fishes ain’t so bad.
I’m not alone then.
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We’re into Year 2 over at Flash Friday Fiction, and this year the word count remains fixed at 150 words, +/- 10. Come join us!
