Update: Brevity is the soul of wit
Not entirely witless, not entirely brief. Works are in progress, some thoughts have been had, my update on all the things.
Reading time: about 9 minutes
Hello my friends! The winter is dragging on, but the clouds cleared for a few days here in the Pacific Northwest. It’s always so lovely to greet the sun after she’s been away for a bit. I’ve also been recovering from a headcold, so my work progress has been slower than I would have ideally liked. Hence this update!
The problem with being sick is that it gives one plenty of time to think, but no energy to execute. Also no energy to analyze and consider whether that brilliant idea is really so brilliant after all….
So what brilliant ideas have I had? Lunar intentions, latch hooking, and Instagram.
Latch hooking. I am a child of the 70s, and I have clear memories of my mom deciding to make a latch hook rug when I was around 7. She’d settle with it in the den and watch TV, the backing spread out across her lap and the chair and the floor, diligently hooking away. It must have been a good 8x10 foot rug, and it was an abstract pattern, in browns and golds and oranges. I remember her showing me how to hook, and so I did some work on it too.
I never actually remember her finishing it, and when I talked to her the other day, neither of us can remember ever seeing it in the house, being put to use. So did she finish it? A forever mystery.
Anyway, I’ve been wanting to try a fabric art, and weaving interests me, but it’s a big commitment. So, I’ve been ruminating about trying latch hooking as an adult instead. Then I saw these amazing wall hangings on Instagram by Judit Just. I don’t think she is latch hooking them, but I feel like something very similar could be latch hooked! I love the different yarn lengths giving them so much texture, and her newest pieces remind me a little of a close-up, side view of a dragon.
And then I was up at midnight the week before last coughing and unable to breathe through my nose in the recliner, and I thought—I could latch hook a DRAGON and write the dragon’s STORY!! I could latch hook alien landscapes and write the story of what happens IN the landscapes! I could make speculative latch hooking A THING!
Is this a good idea? I have no clue. But I did buy a little latch hook kit to see if I even still like it. I’ve just started, but so far I’m in love. Will there be SFF latch hooking? Maaaaaaaaybe!
Lunar intentions. Remember the part in the last update where I was trying to fix my time management issues for the seven millionth time? There’s a saying, I’ve heard, about trying to solve a problem the same way that never works over and over leading to madness? You know the one. Well what came out of realizing the madness must end was my digging into the concept of making lunar intentions instead of trying to run 90-day project plans.
So making a lunar intention is pretty much the same as goal setting. But instead of defining what I plan to get done, the intention defines how I would like to feel. And they are made specifically at the new moon, instead of just any old time. I made my intention, wrote it down and put it where I can see it, and every day I read over it and decide what I can do today that will get me closer to feeling the way I want to feel. In a nutshell, it’s goal setting with tons of flexibility and much less stress. And at every major phase of the moon, I get to break out my tarot cards and journal to help me check in and see how it’s going. I love it. Working this way lets me assess where I am at each day and determine what one thing I need to do next. Which when it comes to creative projects is really the only way to work? Those 90-day plans sound great on Day 1, but on Day 22 when the plan has gone off the rails, I always had to waste time reworking and updating the plan.
That’s been outstanding. Where it got really interesting was last week: I was still recovering, so I wasn’t feeling bad if I didn’t get “enough” done (which is something I feel badly about on a near minute-by-minute basis for all my waking hours and likely a good chunk of my sleeping ones as well). I worked on what I liked for as long as I had energy do to it, and I was able to observe my process dispassionately in a way I never have been able to before. (Up until now, the only metric I cared about was number of tasks / projects done.)
What I learned about my work habits was this: I get in about 3 hours of hard creative work a day (which is an average amount for humans), but I spread it out over 8 hours. Because instead of taking real breaks or just stop working, when I can’t concentrate anymore I waste time in the 1,000,000,001 ways one can waste time on a computer.
Why?? Why would anyone work this way? Oh right because that’s how we’ve been trained to work at desk jobs. And in school. As long as you look busy, you are considered to be working. And now I need to unlearn that training. Because with no one else watching—and no one paying me to sit at a desk for X number of hours a week—I really am wasting time with 0 upside for doing so.
I’m realizing now that I need to get to my creative work, do it in blocks and take real breaks. Unless I am on an unbelievable roll and I just cannot stop, I need to plan other sorts of work to do in a day that are more admin and less intense. And I really, really, REALLY need to stop using errands and homemaking tasks and derping around on the Internet as my way to rest my brain but still “look” like I’m working. And maybe I’ll finally stop feeling like I never get anything done and yet still feel exhausted at the end of a day.
PROGRESS.
Instagram. The big decision I made to keep my work on Substack means I have started thinking about marketing. Not really my wheelhouse, but I don’t think that matters anymore? Marketing is like the new arithmetic. Everyone just needs to learn some.
So I started a new Instagram account (elnorafareman) and made a few posts. I figured that since I don’t have (and don’t want) a formal website, I need some sort of calling card on the Internet that people have actually heard of. I am honestly terrified of Twitter, so Instagram is it.
But what exactly do writers do on Instagram? Or the better question: what do readers want writers to do on Instagram? So far the only answer that I’ve found to that question is that people on IG in general like posts on their grid to have a color theme and / or mood. And that posts & stories connect with one’s audience, while reels bring in new followers? Sigh. I really would like to do something fun and sustainable on IG, but I have no clue what that is. Three sentence stories? Quotes from books I’m reading and enjoying? Lines from my Works In Progress? Short video readings from my work? SFF things? More tarot pics? Is there anything you’d like to see? Are there any writers you follow who are doing fun things on IG? Please let me know! And I’ll get to work on that color theme….
And finally, The Work. I do have actual writing happening over here. Hopefully moreso now that I am recovered from the latest round of illness.
I’ve been collecting ideas and references for my essay on image AIs, and I think what I want to say is getting clearer. I’m piling nuance on nuance here, because I feel writing AI has a subtly different impact on culture than image AI. I’m both excited to be working on it and terrified of potential backlash. But then, I think “potential” is a lot of where the discussion around AI is falling down a lot, so I just need to get over that.
I’ve also been working on my next story to post for you all. It is a story about a superhero academy. It is going……very, very slowly.
Ok here’s the thing. I finished the first draft of this story for a flash fiction workshop last year. My writing group’s feedback taken in aggregate amounted to: we want more! When I ran the story through Sudowrite’s fake Beta readers, they also asked for more. More background on the superhero academy, backstories for the characters, more dialogue, more setting details, more character emotions and reactions. Basically, we want this story to be bigger!
Which seriously, is very ego-flattering and great. And I am trying to do that. But um. I’ve never tried to expand a story before. So I’ve spent a lot of time thinking out character motivations and worldbuilding so that I have something to expand with. And every time I think I’ve figured out enough to start a re-write, I’m stopped in my tracks with more questions. I’m starting to get really frustrated, because I’m not trying to write an epic high fantasy Robert Jordan-ian multi-volume saga. I just need to turn a 1500 word story into a 3000-4000 word story. Most professional writers can write a short story in a week. What am I even doing over here?!?
I don’t know what I’m doing, is what. So I hope you all can be a little patient with me on this one, because it really is a good story, and I’m excited about the ideas I’ve come up with to make it even better. I need to figure out this skill of expanding a story, as it’s a vital one for a writer to have in her toolset. I’ll keep working, and updating, and snippeting bits of it, if you’d be interested in that! Do let me know.
Thanks again for coming on this journey with me, my friends. I hope the winter is not wearing on you too harshly, and I’ll talk to you again soon.
With lots of love 💖,
Elnora
Late to this, but still wanted to write a comment :)
"...if I didn’t get “enough” done (which is something I feel badly about on a near minute-by-minute basis for all my waking hours and likely a good chunk of my sleeping ones as well)"
Are you me? Haha. But seriously, I get plagued by these kind of thoughts. My wife constantly has to remind me that "it's OK to not achieve every day".
Hope you're getting some signs of Spring over in the Pacific Northwest. Autumn is now afoot down in Melbourne, Australia.
I am here for the latch hooking. Also, latch hooking themed Insta? But related to writing and speculative fiction and whatnot?