Three Things Thursday

Cheryl!

It’s Christmastime!

I’m already singing Christmas carols all day long and reading Christmas stories at every naptime and bedtime. I know that means I’ll be sick of it long before Christmas actually rolls around, but I don’t care. I love this time of year.

I have always wanted to write a new classic Christmas story.  When I was younger, I’d take a notebook and pen and hide under the Christmas tree to write, thinking the twinkle lights would inspire me. It didn’t work.

It’s difficult, because most Christmas stories are cliché and contrived.  The protagonist is poor and sad and has great disdain for Christmas, only to be amazed by a Christmas miracle and eventually converted to the wonder of the season. That’s what we expect from a Christmas story, and really, that’s what we want.

The same dilemma occurs with much of literature. We want the protagonist to find true love, inner peace, or to escape from a bad situation. If these things don’t happen, we feel betrayed by the writer. If they do happen, the writer is scoffed at as being unoriginal.

The only way I’ve found to escape this cycle is to approach an unoriginal idea in an original way. Hopefully, someday I’ll be able to apply that for myself!

Brenda!

Last week, I wrote about “Timeshifting” by Stephan Rechtschaffen, M.D., and said that his book, used and paperback, is still available through Amazon, and that I would share some of his ideas this week.

In his chapter 7, he gives a series of exercises in Timeshifting. After sharing a quote by Thich Ghat Hanh: “The miracle is not to walk on water.  The miracle is to walk on the green earth in the present moment, to appreciate peace and beauty that are available now. . . . We need only to find ways to bring our body and mind back to the present moment so we can touch what is refreshing, healing and wondrous.”

Rechtschaffen invites us to practice Timeshifting for various and important reasons:
Timeshifting to  Be in the Moment
    Create Time Boundaries
    Honor the Mundane
    Create Spontaneous Time
    Do What We Like To Do
    Create Time Retreats

Wouldn’t you like to have the TIME to do and enjoy ALL of those?  It’s mostly a matter of concentrating on what is happening RIGHT NOW, and NOT paying notice to what happened five minutes ago, or what is coming up in the next hour.

Carol!

How was your NaNo?

I failed.

I always fail.

Sure, I got about a fifth of the way thru a new book. And I wrote a picture book and I rewrote a book for an editor, but I wanted to make myself write five days a week for the month. And I did okay for one week. Then I let life get in the way.

Poop.

I would love to hear some success stories.

Like HOW you were able to write daily.

What you did to stay successful.

That kind of thing.

😦