Crafting

Every once in a while, I get in a really crafty mood. Sometimes it's the result of a project that's been mulling in my head and finally spills out, demanding attention (must! buy! yarn!). Other times it's from a need to do something with my hands and be away from people. Often, it's the drive to try something new.

For the last week or two, I've been working on my Halloween costume, a Regency-style dress so I can be Elizabeth Bennet from Pride and Prejudice. (Yes... book nerd...) I've never done such an involved sewing project before. I had to carefully read the instructions, troubleshoot problems, and worst of all, hand sew buttonholes. I even opted for period accuracy and hand stitched the visible seams. I usually wouldn't put in so much time for a Halloween costume, but my hope is that I can possibly use it in the future for reenactments and cosplay. (And now I can be Lizzie Bennet whenever I want.)

Making the dress started me thinking about the patience it must have taken to live in a time where people had to make their own clothes, grow their own food, and repair their own tools. Things we take for granted, even get irritated about if they take too long, were simply considered work to be done. People had to be productive in order to get to what was more important.

Except I realized that didn't have anything to do with me making the dress.

For me, doing something like sewing a dress simply because I can is a way to instantly feel accomplished. Since I'm good at doing crafty things, trying a different crafty thing feels like something new, but really it's just another exercise in things I know I can do. It doesn't take too much effort, but I still end up with a tangible manifestation of how skillful I am.

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Even when I try something completely new to me, the beginning stages are often easier to grasp, so it feels like I'm making progress. I do believe it's important for a person to be able to do a wide variety of things, but in RPG terms, my weakness is a tendency to multiclass. And giving in to the excitement of trying new things can take away from working on more important things -- skills where I now need to put in a lot of effort to improve and really accomplish something.

Namely, writing.

Because I love learning, it's easy to feel satisfied when trying something new. It is much harder to get past the beginning stages and dedicate myself to becoming an expert. Writing my novel is proving difficult. It's no longer new and interesting, but if I want to excel at it, I'm only going to improve if I keep working, rather than distracting myself with easier projects.

It's funny how doing something by hand can show you how short your attention span really is.

Scared to Miss

Being home for Christmas and January has not, so far, been very productive. Though holiday busyness has wound down, it doesn't look like I can plan for every day to be a writing day. Now, I get to decide whether to bemoan the fact that I don't have time perfect for writing, or I can write anyway.

I've given the first ten chapters of  Void to a few people for feedback. One early responder has informed me that it does not, in fact, suck. This is encouragement enough to face my month-and-half distant deadline with defiance. Fourteen more chapters, ha! You don't scare me, February 15th.

But it does. Not just the still-present possibility that I could fail my deadline, but giving everything else up to it. It is important to take care of the house for my parents because they're at work all day and I am not. It is important to work out with my sister because I don't spend much time with her. Sometimes, it is needful to take a break and catch up on a book or favorite blog to recharge ideas.

Noveling isn't my only project. I want to rescue other parts of my life that have fallen by the wayside. Writing letters used to be important to me; I'm working to make it so again. Blogging is both a creative outlet and a discipline; thus, I've resolved to post every Sunday. Being away from school has resulted in squeezing Bible reading into the cracks because it doesn't "feel routine" anymore, but lack of routine is a terrible excuse when I've been relieved of school responsibilities for a month. If I don't take time to be with God, it's certainly not the universe's fault.

What will happen if I do not submit Void to Tor by February 15th? Nothing. I will still have most of a finished story. I'll still have friends and family who care about me and support me in their own ways. Maybe I'll finish by the 17th, or the 1st of March. Maybe it will be a better story if I wait and revise that long. But my goal is still possible. And I have to remember that the last-minute deadline rush is something I'm very good at.

Am I scared? Yes. Scared to miss my deadline and a bunch of other things. It's not some monstrous fear I must remove from my path. It's a smaller fear, one that's not so much an obstacle as a companion. It might even help me to grow.

My Triumphant Return... sort of

The very last sentences of my last blog post declared my intention to write soon and often. I'm ashamed to admit that that was three months ago. My excuse is that my house has terrible wifi -- so terrible that my laptop refuses to connect to it, out of principle -- and that our home computer is so slow and old that it is a pain to use.

Since I don't believe enough people read this that my not posting could be considered even mildly irritating, I'll spare the apologies. Mostly, I'm sorry for myself. I've been missing the opportunity to exercise my writing brain and the dedication it takes to keep up a regular blog.

I could again promise that I'll write regularly and often. But actions speak louder than words, even occasionally more than the written word. So, if you're reading this, keep coming back.

I am again back at Taylor University. I've been here a week and a half, so my return to the school did not perfectly coincide with my return to the blog. I've been busy. The good and bad thing about being part of such a wonderful community is that there are many worthy things in which to invest one's time. I had to pick one of the most time-consuming: theater. Being properties master means arriving before classes start and participating in theater boot camp. Really, "boot camp" translates to "reading through the plays for the season, hanging around with cool theater people, and working in the shop a whole lot." Thanks to the work of some wonderful volunteers, my props loft is looking a lot cleaner and may even pass fire code inspections. There's work to be done, but after stacking furniture, bags of fake snow, suitcases, more candles than any one theater could possibly go through in ten years, kitchen utensils, fake weapons, wine glasses, windows, ancient telephones, typewriters, bales of straw, yard decorations, and the paraphernalia of many shows past, I'm starting to feel like I know what I'll be capable of doing this year.

My other major responsibility is one that requires a lot from me as well, though in a different way. I'm discipleship assistant on my floor, a.k.a. DA. This means I lead floor prayer and generally look out for the spiritual well-being of the girls with whom I live. They are fantastic, strong, and talented people. I am hugely blessed to live with them and with the wonderful people of my dorm in general. I'm an introvert, but I will have no problem wanting to invest my time and care in their lives. But in that, I'm also going to have to focus on my spiritual growth, not just theirs. I love Taylor because I can see God moving everywhere. Still, it's easy to take that for granted. I can't just sit and watch what He does. I have to ask Him to work in me.

There is one other big project which I mentioned in my last post. I'm still planning to submit my novel, Void, to a publisher come February. To complete draft two, I decided I would participate in Camp NaNoWriMo, a summer version of the crazy writing dash that usually fills my November. I couldn't have picked a busier month to do it in, but I have a day and a half left and only 6,000 words to write. Then comes the revising.

I may have returned to the blog with my tail between my legs, but I came back to Taylor filled with hope and joy. I've already been stressed to the point of tears. I've already been too busy to keep up with my word count goals and other things. But now, everything's settling into place.

Pray for me, if you're so inclined. I'll need it. Pray for Taylor, for the endeavors of the students, and all the things God has planned for us for the year. The only thing I know is that I have a lot to learn.

Creative Projects/Scrivener Review

Home for the holidays means lots of relaxing time for me. I've been in a comfortable sleepy haze which has mostly been spent playing Mario Kart with my brother and visiting friends. Still, I've made room for ocarina practice and finished an ongoing art project. Before I wanted to be a writer, I wanted to be an artist. Interestingly, both these prospective professions were sparked by excellent teachers.

Now I have professors, and though I admire many of them, I'm largely on my own to decide what to do with my career. I'm supposed to be an adult now, after all. I love practicing music. I love drawing. And I love writing. Though I don't doubt that I want to be a writer, I'm starting to worry that my other creative projects might be taking my attention away from writing. It's something I need to practice more than music. It's something for which I need to make long-term goals.

Over my extended family Christmas, I talked to my NaNoWriMo-loving cousin about my novel. It made me realize just how much I love the ideas in my story. Since then, I've been thinking "Hm. I really need to start working on revision." But thinking isn't doing.

Last month, I downloaded the free trial of Scrivener, writing software aimed at breaking down big projects into small pieces. Since the tutorial takes about two hours, I didn't manage to get through it until we started the long drive back to Iowa. Scrivener is a major sponsor of NaNoWriMo, and one of the "winner goodies," at least in past years, is a discount on the software, which is already cheaper for students. My conclusion after going through it was that I'm not ready for Scrivener yet. I'm not at the point in revising where I can start writing scene-by-scene. But once I am ready, I'm getting it.

Scrivener has a ton of features useful for different styles of writing. One writer probably won't use all of them, but there's something for everybody. You can tag different sections by topic or character and then pull out only those sections. You can outline. You can attach different documents to notecards that contain summaries or to-do lists and see what work you have left to do at a glance. You can have documents inside folders which themselves contain text. If you're creative, you can use any number of the tools to work for you. For me, I'd probably have separate documents for all the major scenes in the outline view and then have to-do lists for each of the scenes in the notecard view. I'm particularly intrigued by the ability to track different sections by topics, keywords, or characters -- beasically, whatever you want to tag.

Or you can keep it simple. Outline, write scene-by-scene. Breaking it down is really what it's all about. It appears flexible enough to work not just for novels, but research papers, nonfiction, and other lengthy writing projects.

The only thing I was disappointed in was that the feature for taking notes on different documents just wasn't big or flexible enough for me, which is why I take written notes anyway when typing a story. I need the freedom to write all over the page, draw arrows to things and underline things without having to think about dragging boxes around or formatting. Having to do this by hand is okay by me, though.

If you're interested, I recommend getting the free trial and running the tutorial; after going through it, you'll know what features are good for you and whether or not you want to give it a try for real.

But like I said, I'm not there yet. Today is the day I start revising. I'm reading my novel through for the first time and taking notes on what needs to be done. I'll see what I need to do from there.