Disappointing

I don't think that writing is as easy as I thought it would be. I love it, but it can be difficult.  Sometimes, disappointed, and I am tempted to just leave it alone. But I know that life is full of disappointments. I remember the dawning realisation that I would be unlikely to be marrying Han Solo anytime soon – even though I had actually queued all the way around the Empire Cinema for well over an hour to see him in Star Wars. (Do you remember queuing to see a film? Those were the days.) Then there was the time I came second in the school English Essay Competition, which meant winning a rubbish book about Tutankhamun rather than the full set of Nancy Drew Mysteries awarded to the winner. 

In my constant quest to be more productive and consistent as a writer, I have listened to lots of advice – for instance, Anne Lamott's “Stop NOT writing”. True and excellent, but not helping with consistency. We have invested in a desk, which is no mean feat in a two-bedroom apartment, and I would just like to note my thanks to my husband here, who spent several hours moving everything around to make it fit and is now thinking that he could have a successful career putting ships into bottles. I love my desk and am determined that, very soon, it will be more than somewhere to leave my clothes at the end of the day. 

I have been made aware of the Seinfeld method of increasing writing productivity called “Don’t Break the Chain”. In this method, Jerry Seinfeld – one of America’s finest comedy writers – places a cross on his calendar every day that he writes. This (obviously) produces a chain of crosses. He then has a powerful reminder and indeed a pressure to write because he doesn’t want to have any gaps. This is brilliant. I am very interested in this. I should put a cross every day in my planner and create a line of crosses along the top of each page. This is a fine idea and, as soon as I remember to open my planner with any degree of regularity, I think it may work very well. (Does anyone else spend time every Sunday getting their planner ready for the week and then completely forget about it until next Sunday? Just me then.)  However, on looking online, I see that Jerry Seinfeld has denied that he ever came up with this method. He said that he had invented it as a bit of a joke (comedians, eh?) and that it sort of ran away with itself, and now it is actually called the Seinfeld method. Again – disappointing. (Although Seinfeld has said that he has used the method successfully and it has been recommended by productivity gurus such as James Clear, so baby and bathwater and all that.)  

So, am I downhearted that all these amazing micro prompts don't always work? YES! But I am learning lots about Christian writing

1. Not everything works perfectly all the time. I start paragraphs, and they are frankly very poor. But I also read something back and think - that is exactly what I wanted to say. (The reader may not feel the same about this, but I can't be dealing with everything.) 

2. Let's be honest. I work for a living,  and there's a charity to keep afloat during difficult times. There's a lot of football to watch, Messy church to wash up after, and sunny balconies to sit on (see above). At this point in my life, I'm not going to be able to write every day, and I can draw pretty crosses until the cows come home. Hopefully, this will change one day, but for now, I work hard on writing when I can. 

3. My father, who thought that Luther was a bit of a mimsy-wimsey when it came to his position on spirituality, gave me an old book once. There was a lot of good advice around the Christian faith, some of which changed my life. There were also statements in it that may well not be legal these days. But I do remember one line

"To be disappointed in yourself is to have believed in yourself"

Please don't shout at me. I know that we should all believe in ourselves. However, what he was saying (and I am not reproducing the paragraph because there are more Thees and Thous than Oliver Cromwell's ever shook a stick at) was that believing in God to help, support and direct us is a safer and surer way. This is a life thing, but for me, it is a writing thing as well. I'm believing for writing growth and producing good things, but if I can't always do it all the time, then I'm going to try to be happy enough with that.

Lesley blogs at https://wrinklymartha.blogspot.com/ just about life and things really.