Showing posts with label creative non-fiction writing. Show all posts

Writing Routines

By | Published Tuesday, February 5, 2013

This year I've decided that the first post of each month will be something related to writing/blogging. You can check out the first 'writing' post from last month, here!

They'll say things like "write everyday!" "Carve out time in your schedule to write." "It doesn't matter if it's not good, just as long as you're doing it!" Such are the tips that many people will read when researching online on writing and blogging advice. I'm not here to bash the suggestions or even prove them wrong, because they're not wrong. Thousands of people, including myself, have found some amount of success by heeding these words.

I will say that I think that much of the advice might be a little unrealistic, and also lacking something else: read regularly. If not more regularly than you write! And at least in my opinion, yes, it matters a lot what you read. I am not of the camp that believes "it doesn't matter what you read, as long as you're reading!" No. It makes a difference, I think, if you're reading regularly the back of the cereal box vs. reading regularly the newspaper, or the latest NYTimes Best Seller, or something off the list of The Best American Non-Fiction. It matters a lot what you fill your head with, regularly. At least it should matter a lot what you fill your head with on a regular basis.

When I first began blogging I wrote posts everyday. Well, that's actually a lie. I sat down in front of my computer one night each week and hammered out 6-7 posts all in one go, and then scheduled them to go live for the rest of the week. By doing this I learned a few things:

1. Blogging is hard work. Like really hard work. At least for the kind of blog that I wanted to have, or thought that I wanted to have...
2. I did not want to do that (and be miserable) for the kind of the blog that I wanted to have.
3. It taught my brain to think in terms of blog posts. This is different than, say, teaching my brain to think in terms of a haiku, a research paper, or a 140 character tweet. 
4. It taught me what it takes to build up a readership

Now I sit in front of my computer one night each week and hammer out 3 posts to be scheduled live Tues, Wed, and Thurs. Am I still writing regularly? Yes. Am I *still* blogging regularly? Yes. Am I happier doing this schedule than what I was? Yes. Does that make the quality of my posts a lot better? I think so!
I'll probably sound like a broken record by now but... writing is a hobby for me. At least the kind of writing where I am not getting paid, or I am not getting graded on. The schedule that I have now allows me to continue writing as a hobby, it makes it enjoyable and less like a 'task' or a chore that I am obligated to do. Part of why I scaled my schedule back was to preserve the enjoyment of writing while also maintaining that connection I have with my readers. (Also because.... well, you know... I am a young person who has a life to lead and lots of mistakes to be experienced.) The other reason why this schedule works for me is because blogging is not the only kind of writing that I enjoy doing! If I had my choice -- I would rather be writing fiction. All of the time. But that's not something I've really figured out realistically how to do... yet. 
This schedule that I have now found works for me because it allows me to continue growing as a writer. That's really all it amounts to.

I guess what I am trying to say about writing routines is this: figure out why you want to write, and then write regularly for that reason. When we force ourselves to do things just for the sake of getting them done, it becomes increasingly dreadful in an increasingly fast way! The routine I have is probably going to be different from the routine some other OI blogger, or any other blogger might have. It's a matter of what each individual is writing for and about. If what is regular for you means that you write every time the house is quiet and no one is bothering you, then stick to that routine. If what is regular for you means that you write on the commute home from work/school, then go for it! So here are my writing tips: Find your regular routine, read, and do what makes you happy. 


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On Writing: Memories

By | Published Tuesday, January 15, 2013

I've decided that the first post of each month is going to address writing. Because that's one of the top reasons I started this blog, and because for every five question I get... at least two of them are related to writing/blogging.
(And just like the rest of the entries in this blog (unless otherwise stated), these "writing posts" will also be based off of my personal experience. I write for fun, as a hobby, for when I'm supposed to be doing actual work, ...and because it makes me look productive when I'm supposed to be doing 'actual' work. Not because I necessarily know what it is I'm doing with my writing.)

Apparently one of the many 'labels' for the kind of blog posts that I do is: 'medical creative non-fiction.' There's an entire genre out there of this style of writing! I only learned this a few months ago! Because up until that point outside of calling it "my blog posts" ... I also referred to these entries as "my memories."

Writing about your medical history is already on its own intimate. The things that have happened to your own body are (whether you understand them or not) - a personal and private affair. And while medical professionals can explain and label, and family members can care for and worry: the things that happen to you medically are your own. They are your own experiences that no one else can feel or think about for you. Regardless of how 'textbook a case' may be that you've presented, once you've experienced it it becomes yours - and remains uniquely your own. Sharing these experiences should, for the writer, be treated like some kind of risk you're taking - and for the reader, with the respect that this moment of sharing demands.
That is what I try to get across in my blog posts. The underlying tone, and the courage that I need to put these experiences down all comes from the fact that I own them. They aren't right or wrong, it's just how I've remembered events or experiences from this one aspect of my life. And even with these assurances I still feel a flip-flopping nervousness in my stomach as I schedule posts to be published.
There is a vulnerability in writing (and sharing) your memories that is simultaneously cathartic and nerve wracking. It's like right before you see your x-ray, you either know already something is wrong or not - but it's out of your hands now once it's caught on that film. Once your truth hits paper it becomes something that others can discuss and interpret, you sit back and wait for the feed back to drift back to you. Uncertain how you will react to it, and even more uncertain to whether or not you can do anything with the feedback you get. For an action driven person this can be tough!

Against the recommendation of many "professional" "real" "serious" "actual" bloggers out there... I don't do drafts of my posts. (Maybe for about a handful of the hundreds that have been written.) In part it's because I want to stay true to those memories that I initially recall, and also in part because I haven't figured out a way to manage my time to allow me to do drafts & final versions of my posts. With that in mind, I also try to focus on one 'memory' or incident at a time. It gets overwhelming, for me anyway, when I try to remember all the times I have broken a bone in school. Or if I try to remember all the times I have had to splint myself. Honing in just one moment allows me to stay as true as possible to the thoughts and emotions I am recalling during that event. It also, by default, means that I am slowing those experiences down in my mind in order to recall as accurately as possible. And that's where the real work is for me, arguably where I struggle the most when it comes to writing my memories. But it's also the part of the process I am most drawn to, over and over again.

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I'm Thinking of Just You

By | Published Monday, May 21, 2012

Last week we celebrated the first birthday for the blog. I'm still a bit shocked that it has already been that long, or surprised that it has ONLY been a year - because with so many of the people I've met through sharing my posts, it feels like we've known each other for far longer. 

During the time I have been keeping this blog I've also been fielding questions each week for the Fracture Free Friday Q&A column. Most of the questions have to do with something medically related or has something to do with my experience as a young adult with O.I. However, one of the most common questions I've gotten has nothing to do with O.I. or being disabled. Here it is: "How do you keep writing blog posts? Where do the ideas come from?"

This is when I wish I had an actual camera of my own to use because I would snap a picture of the unlined notebook pages I use to plan entries. Since that's not a possibility you'll have to bear with my descriptions of the writing process instead: at the start of each month I have a massive brainstorm where I list any and all ideas that may serve as blog post fodder. Then on the next page I create a terrible hand-drawn calendar. This calendar is complete with crooked horizontal and vertical lines to create the numerical grid, I fill in the numbers and often I mess up doing this part.. (like forgetting that February has 28 days etc). I then take the blog post ideas that I brainstormed and attempt to schedule it into this calendar, doing my best to make sure that there is a variety in topics for each week. Voila! Now we have ourselves a blog editorial calendar!!

But still that doesn't really answer the question. That's, honestly, just the simple stuff to how this process works. The tough part is actually sitting down in front of my computer and thinking about the content behind those topic ideas. Here is my secret: I'm often thinking about just one person in my head. 
Sometimes that one person is a first-time mom or dad who is worried, sometimes that person is a classroom aide uncertain of what to do, maybe it's a doctor, a friend, a passersby on the street, a young teenager, a college student excited for new independence, a 20-something partying away... sometimes it's the person next to me in an elevator, sometimes it's the roll of toilet paper, or sometimes it's my wheelchair, sometimes it's to myself at a younger age, sometimes it's the conductor of the subway. Just one person (or thing) is all it takes.

According to my blogger data my readers span from ages 13 to those who are 55+! You are representing 20 countries around the world and speak more than 10 different languages! Those statistics alone can make writing a blog entry overwhelming and intimidating; it's easy to quickly fall into the trap of oh my god what do these people want to hear about? What would be most helpful for all of them? How can I make all of their lives easier? (I have discovered that no answer exists for any of those questions).
I'll be the first to admit that there are many days when I feel like I am grasping at empty thought bubbles, clumsily and blindly popping all of them hoping for something truly awesome and meaningful to splatter onto the computer screen for me. That rarely happens, actually it has never happened.

But then I remind myself of how this all began in the first place. Perfectly Imperfecta didn't set out to try to rid the world of all its problems with its first entry. I would be a total fool to think I could destroy all the barriers anyone has ever faced, and I'm not writing for the masses to peruse while standing in grocery check-out lines. This crazy adventure began because I'm trying to break barriers one post at a time, by speaking to just one person at a time, about one issue at a time. I want to talk to you because I believe that you matter. It's just that simple. 

Back to the idea of thinking about you - the clearer the image of that one person I have in my mind, the 'stronger' the blog post tends to be. This is also the general strategy for how I tackle other projects or problems: when I can clearly see just one piece of the final end-product, or the final solution in my mind -- I have a better sense of how to get there. Otherwise when I try to tackle the whole shebang it becomes too daunting and I get this paralyzing sense of I can't do this.
Just one piece at a time, we'll see it together and when our visions align we'll break just one more barrier together. 

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Wrap-Up

By | Published Friday, July 22, 2011

This week has been busy! Let's see what we've got eh?

  • Wednesday: In the second post of the "Going to School" series I am addressing all the young students themselves! I wrote a silly poem that I hope helps parents and young children discuss some of the worries they have around the first day of school
  • Thursday: Children's Hospital Boston is a place where I owe so much of my growth and development to! When I was asked to share my experiences of transitioning into my first college dorm with other patients of Children's I jumped at the opportunity! 
  • Friday: I've been getting several questions about why I write and specifically why I started the blog. Check it out over at Unbreakable Journey for today's Fracture Free Friday post & as always, enjoy your Friday!

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Destination D.C. 1 of 2

By | Published Saturday, June 25, 2011

In a post 2 weeks ago I wrote about the time I "ran away" from home. If you missed that one you can read it here. Some of my readers wanted to know what my bus ride over to D.C. was like and so I share it below. 

In front of me was a guy who looked like a crash test dummy after a rear end car smash. The skin on his face seemed sealed to the back of the seat in front of him, a trickle of drool staked out a southward path across a terrain of ripped leather covering, and his limbs had been sent helter-skelter by the violent snore of a deep sleep.
“Welcome aboard ladies and jeyntlemen to Peeter Paan baas naambur eighteeen siixty seyven. My nem iiss RRRoger and I am driver for thee eev’ning. Let me go through sum rules of thee baas….” The accent that tried to cram an entire octave of sounds into each word said his name was anything but Roger. Oddly the foreign lilt settled my nerves a bit, it seemed conflicted with itself – struggling with what it should sound like and what it wanted to sound like. 
“…Now thees baas ees eequeepped with lavatory, but pleeease I beg of yoou ladies and gentlemen, pleeease yoose onlyyy for eemurgency! And reemembur to flush or we have major bad problem -”
“It’ll smell like stinky cheese!” Barged a voice from the back; every random group of people has one, that socially awkward and loud character. She was directly across the aisle from me.
“Whaaaat diid you say m’am?” Roger asked over the loudspeaker.
“I said it’ll smell like stinky cheese!” She blared again, as though she were talking to a group of unruly preteens ripe with B.O. from P.E. class. 
 She gnashed mercilessly away at pieces of caramel she had offered me hours before,
            “Hey!” Her voice had struck the odd ice-breaker less atmosphere a bit too harshly. I turned from the window, annoyed that someone disrupted my meticulous stare at South Station. I was trying to commit it to memory: every Roman column, and each window pane nearly erased by years of untamed congestion from Boston traffic; even that guy who stood outside selling pretzels from his cart, his skin as weather-worn as an old fisherman’s raincoat. The rounded structure was like a well-respected grandpa whose tough-love grumblings you longed for when gone. After merely twenty-minutes into the trip, I discovered I did.
            “D’ya wanna piece o’ caramel?” She held out a wrapper the same metallic gold as the Chinese wind chime that hung by our deck, the sight made my stomach ache. My eyes skittishly scanned the other passengers, no other heads turned. Why should they? We were only a group of strangers who happened to be traveling together. Clearly, the air we shared for the next fourteen hours was a pathetic microcosm in respect to our eventual destinations. Some of them I imagined were headed home; I figured those were the ones who wore tourist targeted Boston or Harvard hoodies. Others I imagined were running away, like that kid whose fingers found no comfort as they clutched at a pillow enshrined with Teenage Mutant-Ninja Turtles. I had hoped the kid would sit next to me.
            “No thanks” I replied coolly. I tried to hide the fact that I was obviously a ‘First-Time Passenger,’ as so embarrassingly engraved in red on my e-ticket. 
            “Fine, suit yourself” her voice humbled, as if she had been sure I would eagerly take the caramel. Perhaps if we had shared that mystifying realm of the ‘back of the bus’ for a couple more hours; maybe I would have taken the piece of candy.

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