Deborah Kalan says, "Just do it"

I’m so pleased to have Deborah Kalan back here at Choices. Since we met in a Pilates class about a year and a half ago, our friendship has blossomed. We get together socially with our husbands, and we always have our writing projects to talk about.  Yet, sometimes life events seem to interfere with our writing. Deborah tells how the obstacles play havoc on her determination to keep sitting in her chair in front of her computer. They are wise words indeed.

How to Begin Your Daily Writing

(when you just don’t think you can)

by Deborah Kalan

There are three obstacles that often interfere with my writing. 

    1. Getting started

    2. Going back to a previously written piece

    3. Staying focused 

Getting Started

Some days I’ll flip open my computer and what do I see in front of me? No, not a blank page. That would be easy. What I see is my Yahoo page with a multitude of hooking headlines. “Sex Prequel Casts New Samantha,” “Coolest Vending Machine Ever,”  “Dogs See in Color,” and other distracting previews. Then, as long as I’m there, I click on my inbox to see if anyone is sending me some oh-so- important news or information that can’t wait another second to be read. After taking 15 or 20 minutes to scan all of the minutia and delete 98% of it, I quickly and guiltily log onto my Facebook page to ogle over the mostly unimportant self-serving posts of my seventy some odd ‘friends’. And still I haven’t written one single word.

Getting Back To Previously Written Pieces

When I am on a writing roll, I often finish a rough draft, or even 2nd or 3rd run through of a satisfying piece of writing. I’ll slap on a cursory title, save it to my documents and then I . . . forget about it. It could be a genius essay. It might be a poem that has a chance for a Pulitzer.  But I put it somewhere and forget where it is or even that I’ve written it at all. I could blame this on “old age,” but it’s honestly a matter of disorganization. Should I make a hard copy and file it in a colorful file folder marked “to be revisited?” Should I leave it on my desktop where I will see it the next time I open my computer? 

I know I have many pieces saved and filed and forgotten. If I could find a way to organize the work that I have completed, I would find some well written buried treasures.

Staying Focused

I now decide to get down to business and open a blank page to start writing. If I’m not in the middle of a piece I have been working on, I often go to one of my writing sights that I subscribe to for inspiration. Maybe I’ll go to Robert Lee Brewer’s Poetics Asides Blog with the intention of finding a poetry prompt. Instead I start to read about an old Welsh poetic form called a gwawdodyn, or a more commonly known one called a sestina.  I learn the formula and read some examples of the forms. I make a mental note to try these when I get some extra time. 

Then I remember that I the online newsletter from “We Wanted to Be Writers” arrived this morning. I open it and get dizzy with the distraction of a dozen bright blue highlighted links. There are book reviews and lists of books related to the review. There are interviews and blog posts. There’s a calendar of events and words of advise. There’s gossip and anecdotes. I click link upon link and find myself falling down Alice’s hole to the center of the earth where it’s almost impossible to climb back out. Thirty minutes later I’ve become a well informed writer on a wide range of topics but I have yet to begin my daily writing.

I need to call upon my writing genie. You know, the one who pops out of my laptop to encourage me to stay focused, help me organize my work, and stop reading about writing and start writing. 

Like any goal in life that you want to perfect, you need to show up, go through the motions, and keep at it. Then repeat the process until it becomes your habit and you get better at it. 

Just do it!

Deborah's bio

Deborah has been writing about real life since she was in the fifth grade and received a diary with lock and key for her 10th birthday. Even at that young age she found that people in ordinary situations made for intriguing writing. Deborah also writes poetry and fiction and finds the short short story to be one of her favorite genres.

She has been married for 42 years, consecutively, and has two married children and two amazing grandchildren. She likes to describe her dual California residences as living “bi-coastal."  One home is near the coast of Manhattan Beach and the other is near the “coast” of Calabasas Lake.

April poem a day challenge

In honor of National Poetry Month, Robert Lee Brewer, editor at Writer’s Digest and creator of Poetic Asides, holds a poem a day challenge. I love to take the challenge because his prompts are always fun. He also provides his examples to help get us started. This month Robert has also created a platform building challenge through his blog: My Name Is Not Bob. I’m doing that one as well.

Here are a few of my April PAD poems with Robert’s prompts.

Day 5. Write a poem about something before your time. Maybe it’s a certain time in history. Or a type of music. Or a story that was shared by friends or family–before your time.

Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris

brought back a world before my time

and people that I would kill

to have known:

Hemingway, Stein, Fitzgerald

Porter, Baker,

Picasso, Man Ray, and Dali

all in the raucous 1920s.

And for a little more romantic and quiet

take he took us even further back

to the 1980s Belle Epoque

and the artistic worlds of

Toulouse-Lautrec, Gaugin, Degas.

If I can’t be as lucky as Gil

to go back in time,

Woody’s homage to the creativity,

beauty, and romance

of the City of Lights long past

will have to do.

Day 10. Today’s “Two-for-Tuesday” prompts are: 

1. Write a Forest poem or 
2. Write a Tree poem.

Three Palms (Tweet-length)

Outside my window I only see

their wide round trunks

still wet from last night’s rain

that seeped in streaks

into their vertical pores

Day 11. Pick a season (any season) and make it the title of your poem; then, write your poem. For instance, your poem might be titled “Winter” or “Spring” or “Rabbit Season” (if you have a sense of humor and like Looney Tunes cartoons).

What Spring?

In sunny southern California

we have no spring,

and no summer, fall, or winter

either for that matter.

Here the seasons are all mushed together

It’s never hot enough to break a sweat

or cold enough to see your breath

But somehow the flowers

know when to bloom

and the leaves

know when to fall.

Day 15. Use the following five words in your poem: slash, button, mask, strap, and balloon. Use them in any order.

In sharp sweeping strokes

he slashed the flimsy fabric

eliminating all traces

of straps and buttons.

He let the skirt flow free

to billow like a floating

balloon.

Check-in

My garden Buddha says it all

I remember sitting in a circle every morning at an Esalen workshop with everyone in turn giving a one-word check-in assessment of where we are with the day or anything else on our minds. So if I were to give one word for today’s check-in I could say “busy.” However, a better word is “successful.”

I’d say my WOW blog tour is going very well http://www.wow-womenonwriting.com/ . Almost every day is full between June 6, the launch date, and July 1, the last day. If I don’t have a guest blog out there somewhere, a blogger is posting a review of my book. I feel that they are all doing a very caring job. The woman today asked that all who comment learn about bipolar disorder, and she also gave statistics about suicide. Hopefully this tour will help sell books though it’s certainly hard to tell at this point. Last week my rank was number seven in books sold under bipolar at Amazon. Today it is number eight-seven. I really have no idea what that means. Another success is that two more five-star reviews went up on Amazon.

My article, Keeping Fit After Seventy, for Huffington Post’s That’s Fit page is a success way beyond my expectations. http://www.thatsfit.com/2011/06/09/keeping-fit-after-70/ It  was just dropped off the three most popular list after a week on it, moving up from third to first spot. I am definitely stoked. People “Liked “it, tweeted it, copied it and left over forty comments. Most were great, and a few not so great. I’m glad that so many folks bothered to write a comment at all. Many women my age feel as I do about keeping fit though one person 74-yeear-old told me to get a life. Another said she got her exercise doing her housework and running after her grandchildren. Well, I do have a life outside of exercise – in fact if I didn’t workout I wouldn’t have as good a life as I do. And if I had any grandchildren I would gladly run after them instead. One woman said she joined Red Room http://www.redroom.com/user/madeline40 as a result of my article. That was a huge and welcomed surprise.

The lesson here is that I can be successful writing about something other than bipolar and suicide. It makes me want to go back to my novel. The only thing I haven’t been doing much of lately relative to my writing is poetry. I can’t seem to get anything going there. I’ve used a couple of Robert Lee Brewer’s prompts http://blog.writersdigest.com/poeticasides/ lately and done reasonably well with them, but I seem to be having a little bit of a poetry block right now.

Speaking of, my book was mentioned in Robert’s round up this week https://mail.google.com/mail/?shva=1#inbox/1307d7c33e3feccc

and it was the featured book on #bookhashtags http://bookhashtags.com on Wednesday. It’s also in the International Women’s Writers Guild http://iwwg.org newsletter this month. So the word is getting out there slow but sure. As my publisher says, “Whoopee!”