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I’d rather write than talk. Nobody interrupts! Posting monthly or less now--see below. |
My original purpose for this blog, which I started in August of 2019, was to see if I could maintain consistency, to discover what I want to write about, and to find my writing voice. In January, I started a "niche-less" blog at Wordpress.com where I've published weekly. -- Kit’s Kontemplations  . -- I'm preparing to start a Catholic blog on Wordpress.com where I'll post weekly, and another site to put the rest of my writing. I also want to spend more time reading other blogs and offering thoughtful comments, both here on WDC and elsewhere. At most, I will publish once a month at no set time in this blog starting in September of 2020. Thank you to those who have read and rated any posts on this blog. I really appreciate it. I did NOT want to write “about” me on this blog. I wanted to share my interests, discoveries and maybe a few useful insights. If anything I've written helps even one person, whether or not they respond to the post, then this blog has been successful. |
| I've pursued several unrelated interests over the four decades of my adult life that have endured for more than three months. Of these, very few have lasted more than six months, and apart from developing my spiritual life, none have lasted beyond a year. I've returned to a few of them once or twice after a period of several years. I practiced some regularly for a few months then dropped them again and others I played around with more sporadically. In no particular order and aside from writing, I've pursued these interests for a period of three to six months:  using a program to transcribe books into Braille learning about Linux so I could ditch Windows weight loss, nutrition and fitness so I could drop 30 pounds knitting and crocheting squares to be made into blankets for charity learning to play piano with chords and rhythm patterns so I could compose worship songs collecting and sharing spiritual quotes on social media studying apologetics, logic, and algebraI'd still like to learn Latin, advanced music theory, and how to create Android or iOS apps. Are you wondering yet if I have ADD? Even after three months of isolation due to the pandemic, boredom’s not been an issue. I love classics, fantasy, and historical romance novels. The only way I find time for them is to listen to audiobooks while doing housework or working out on the treadmill. My favourite definition of a passion is something you're willing to suffer for. It's something for which you're willing to give up other enjoyable activities in order to make time to do it. It's more than a "strong interest" because even a strong interest dies when shot with obstacles and challenges. A passion isn't necessarily a single activity, nor is it a goal. It's rooted in your soul, a value, or maybe several related values. I've identified the "mission statement" for my life: to become all that God designed me to be and to reflect His truth, beauty and goodness in every area of my life. Flowing from this, my core values are: pursuing physical, emotional and mental wellness maintaining internal balance and focus using my gifts to provide something of value to othersWe don’t just pour our efforts into our heart’s desire, but we also can learn to feel passionate about that which we put effort toward. --Sanam Hafeez, Psy.D THE SECRET TO DEVELOPING PASSIONS (RATHER THAN SEARCHING FOR THEM, LIKE NEEDLES IN A HAYSTACK) If this is true, I'll never develop a passion because I have so many interests and they're like reflecting sunlight on a brook - bright, beautiful and entirely unstable. I don't need to discover my passion; there's abundant advice on how to do that. Rather, I need to settle on one interest or combine a few and develop a passion from these. How do I decide which of these to focus on when any one I choose means I have to sacrifice at least one or two others that I'm equally interested in? I have more time than most people since I'm retired and have few other commitments, especially with the pandemic eliminating our social lives. Still, there are a limited number of daily hours available to pursue any of these and I already go to bed long after midnight. No matter which direction I take, there'll come a time when it gets difficult. I've never been great at persevering through this stage, either from laziness or a lack of self-confidence. If failure is defined as giving up, I've had a lot of failures. I've had two successes at weight loss and both of these were because I wanted it badly enough. As fascinating as I find any of these activities, I don't know if my interest is as powerful and as compelling as my desire was to lose weight. I've reviewed at least 10 articles about "discovering your passion" and several of them offered a list of questions to help you figure this out. If this were a puzzle to be solved or a treasure map to follow, here's where I'd look for clues: 1. What's the most expensive item on your wish list? Or which category describes the majority of items on this list? 2. What "unnecessary" thing do you regularly spend money on? 3. What books are on your shelf or e-reader or audiobook account? 4. Which podcasts do you subscribe to? 5. What sites are in your bookmarks? Or what categories of articles are in your Instapaper, or in your Pocket account? 6. During your workday, what do you most look forward to doing when you leave? 7. What will you stay up past your bedtime to do? 8. What do you yearn to do when you get enough time (when the kids are grown and gone or when you've retired)? 9. What do you never want to do, if you have a choice about it? (Example: sell stuff, speak publicly, or do anything on a computer) 10. What do you most often procrastinate doing other than preparing taxes and visiting the dentist? If it's true that your passion will always "come back to you", then writing could be it for me, or at least in part. This is the third time in my life where I've devoted six months or more of consistent effort to writing. There are other things that I've come back to but nothing I've persevered with for more than a few weeks. At the time I'm writing this, I've maintained my focus on writing for 10 months. I've posted more than 50 articles on my Writing.com blog and about 12 on my WordPress blog. I'm still posting to each of these weekly. Since I'm also considering creating a third one that will focus on Catholic spirituality and apologetics. maybe I won't turn aside from writing to something that seems more interesting. Writing will remain my strongest focus for the foreseeable future. It will never be my only focus – and it doesn’t need to be. Reflection: When you suddenly have a lot of free time, are you excited or bored?Do you have a hobby that is your main focus or do you struggle to balance several competing interests?If you feel pressured to “find your passion”, how do you deal with it? |
| After a couple of months in lock-down due to the pandemic, I decided to return to Sudoku puzzles. A few years before I retired I was solving a lot of them. Whenever I try something new, I try to find guidance so I can be as proficient as possible. One useful tool is the Simple Sudoku program that only works on the Windows platform. I use this to enter puzzles from books. I use the “Print Plain” option to print them large enough for me to work with. When I make errors while solving, I can identify them, use my eraser, then continue solving from that point. If I get stuck, I can use the “Print With Candidates” option and work from that to finish solving. The program does have a button which provides hints. These are often more cryptic than helpful. I read plenty of books and watched quite a few videos, seeking tips for solving Sudoku puzzles. A lot of what’s available is somewhat helpful but mostly confusing. In my search for better solving strategies, I discovered Chad Barker, the Sudoku Professor. He has a unique and very useful approach to solving Sudoku puzzles. Nothing compares to Chad’s videos for ease of understanding, simplicity and effectiveness. His explanations are clear and methodical. In every lesson, he covers the entire puzzle and explains each step of his thought process. He provides PDFs of the puzzles he uses for each lesson so you can print it and follow along. In many of the lessons, he also provides an exercise puzzle and video reviewing the exercise. The only downside to his method is that it won’t work on any electronic version of Sudoku; it has to be pencil and paper. It is not enough to just watch the videos to gain real skill. Practice is essential and he recommends puzzles that have been published in books or newspapers. Nevertheless, I have found the puzzles freely available at KrazyDad.com to be very good. After extended periods away from Sudoku, I’m finding it very worthwhile to review the videos. Watching them, even for a third or fourth time, I noticed very helpful tips I’d forgotten. When I first purchased his lessons, there were four levels: Freshman, Sophomore, Junior and Senior. If you want to solve easy to intermediate puzzles, you’d probably find the Sudoku Essentials and the Bachelor level to be more than sufficient. If you’re really into Sudoku, his higher level courses are worth the investment. The Bachelor level is what corresponds to the four lesson levels I originally purchased. The new levels are: Master’s Prep Master’s Doctorate Mistake EliminatorIn order to do this review, I signed up with a different email. As soon as I did, a web page appeared with two videos that together provide the first of four free lessons. The first free lesson is available immediately after signing up. It covers the “1 through 9 technique”. It’s often the only way to get enough information to make progress on a medium or intermediate puzzle. The second free lesson continues the “1 through 9 technique” and explains the power of two of his pencil-marking techniques. He gives different labels to some number patterns which are more descriptive and explains how identifying them hlelps you solve other cells in the row, column or box. In this lesson he covers the “double-double” which most Sudoku books refer to as a “naked pair”. In the third free lesson, he covers the next step which involves looking at what is missing in rows or columns with fewer than 5 empty spaces. This is covered in later lessons as the “Think Outside the Box” technique. He also reinforces the pencil-marking techniques. The fourth (and final) free lesson highlights the problems with some other solving techniques, especially what Chad calls the "Brute Force" technique where you start by identifying and pencil-marking all the possible candidates for each empty cell. There are a few problems with this: It is tedious, killing any real chance of enjoying the game. It hides, rather than highlights, useful information. Errors are very likely. It provides little help for easy puzzles and is useless for harder ones.When you click the button at the bottom of this last lesson, you see that the Bachelor level course is 50% off for three days, a typical marketing gimmick. Even 50% off is still $97. You have to be pretty committed to Sudoku to pay that much. I paid $70 for what is now the Bachelor course about six years ago and found it worthwhile since I was doing a lot of easy to medium level Sudoku. You may not do as many but perhaps you want to solve much harder ones. If so, you won't find any better help anywhere else. Check out these resources Sudoku Professor: Sign up for free lessons Get 4 lessons free Courses and cost {x-link:https://www.sudokuprofessor.com/products/}Sudoku Curriculum}Simple Sudoku Download program created by Angus Johnson Simple Sudoku Guide Angus Johnson’s Guide to solving Sudoku Places to get puzzles KrazyDad Sudoku puzzles Astraware app and puzzles Other Sudoku Forum |
| I came across some articles about why we write where one author, in particular, said that many writers have never articulated to themselves why they write. I’ve gone through periods where I wrote a lot and regularly, followed by years, even decades, of no writing at all. I first started writing in high school. My English teacher told me to never stop writing because I had talent. I didn’t follow her advice. I was in my 40s by the time I took it up for a couple of years and then dropped it again for almost two decades. Now, in my 60s, I’ve returned to it, hopefully to stay with it this time. Instead of wondering why I kept giving it up, a more interesting question is why do I keep returning to it? Last summer, after helping a friend write a cover letter, there was a stirring within me to return to writing. I re-activated my membership with Writing.com (WDC) and entered a few contests. Something had shifted in me. I had no interest in fiction; creating plots and characters no longer appealed to me. Since I enjoy reading fiction, this makes no sense to me. However, even nine months later, this hasn’t changed. Since WDC offers a blog space, I decided to see how regularly I would publish posts on it. I’ve never been good at sticking with things for long since I have so many interests so imagine my amazement when I’d produced two posts per week from August until December then one post weekly since the beginning of 2020. I’ve also written a few essays for WDC contests with good results. So now I know what I’m meant to write: relatively short non-fiction. The question of why I want to write is linked to the question of who I want to write for. The topics that I write about are pieces of that puzzle. My ideal reader, or “avatar”, is someone who shares my interests and is passionate about learning new things. If I find myself wondering how important writing is to me, my feelings about it are no reliable guide. I need to look at how much time I spend creating new content or doing “writing-related” activities in the past week; has this increased, stayed constant or decreased? It’s not how I feel about an activity, it’s how much time I spend doing it that truthfully indicates how important it is to me now. On days where I don’t feel like creating something new, I want to still do something related to writing. I’m afraid that, otherwise, I’ll lose my “momentum” and not be able to get it back. I’ve invested so much time and energy into writing this time around that I don’t want to risk wasting it. Having created a “real” blog on Wordpress.com is helping because it’s a commitment to real and potential readers. When it comes to fresh writing that isn’t for one of the WDC contests, I write about things I’ve discovered and encourage my readers to take opportunities to learn and to engage in critical thinking. I express my opinion about something important to me or share a perspective that is counter-cultural. Sharing discoveries I’ve been writing some book reviews, and plan to review a few sites and products. I like to share things I discover. When it comes to sharing information, I like to research a topic, to break it down and summarize it in a way that enables my readers to move from complete bewilderment to, hopefully, a basic general understanding. Support learning and thinking Besides pointing readers to free opportunities to learn online, I write to encourage critical thinking. I’ve written about pseudoscience, navigating the nutrition maze, and dealing with over-abundant contradictory advice on a topic. Stating opinions I’m not interested in controversies and debates. I just share my insights and values. If others can relate or if it helps them to know that they’re not alone in how they view a situation or practice, that’s a blessing for both of us. For those who see things differently, they have good reasons for their perspective. An example of this would be the article I wrote about consuming news media. Suggesting new perspectives We sabotage ourselves in so many ways. Our beliefs and attitudes shape how we behave and the habits that keep us from reaching our goals. I like to point the flashlight in a new direction. My article Let “good enough” BE enough suggests that getting the task accomplished is better than waiting forever for it to be “perfect”. The writing I’ve done since last summer has given me a sense of who I’m writing for. It’s revealing some things that I’m passionate about. One of these things is “truth”, something I believe is absolute, not relative. I know I want to continue to write whether or not I ever see evidence that anyone has read my articles. That is one indication of how important writing is to me now. Reflections for others who write: Have you ever listed the reasons why you write? Do you know how important writing is to you? What genres of writing are you drawn to and which ones don’t interest you in the least? |
| After considering the advice to “write every day” and some other useless tidbits, I want to share what I found most interesting and useful for someone who doesn’t write consistently, who does not want to give up, and who wants to figure out where writing fits into her life plan. After reading a lot of articles, I grouped the most interesting tips I found into three categories: Staying in the flow Improving your craft Maintaining motivation Ways to stay “in the flow” when writing drafts: Put your mobile devices in airplane mode and disconnect your laptop from the WiFi. Turn off spelling and grammar checkers. Prepare a general outline or mind map before starting a first draft. Write TK as a marker for where you need to add or edit something later and move on. Put your editing voice in “lock down”.Removing potential distractions and having at least a general sense of direction when I start the first draft is obvious. The TK tip is something I’d never have thought of. I can search for it when I’m ready to edit. The fact that something will need attention doesn’t have to prevent me from finishing the draft. The hardest part of writing is keeping my editing voice quiet. Writing the TK in places reassures my inner editor that she’ll get her chance later; she can go chill somewhere else until I’m ready for her help. Improving your craft: Become a grammar expert. Increase your vocabulary. Increase your typing speed. Practice writing headlines.I’m reasonably good at grammar and there’s definitely room for improvement. I have the Elements of Style and a workbook to go with it that I’ve not opened yet. I completed a Foundations of Grammar course at Lynda.com (freely available through my local library membership). I want to improve my grammar skills but I don’t aspire to be an expert. There are various style guides out there and they’re massive! I don’t write for an income so I don’t need to be a “Grammar Guru”. Learning new words can be more fun than work. You don’t need to use uncommon words but it’s important to know what they mean so that you don’t misuse them. Since the average reading level is at about the 8th grade, you might wonder why to bother increasing your vocabulary. Because I’m a writer, I’m fascinated with the power and meaning of words. Words are for a writer what flour is for a baker. I learned touch-typing in high school so I don’t really need to work at increasing it unless I decide to do freelance transcription or data entry. There are plenty of apps available to help you learn or improve your typing skill. I’d definitely do it if I were a 2-finger typist so that my fingers could keep up with my ideas. I can type much faster than I write by hand. At the same time, there is a different “feel” to handwriting that works better than typing, depending on what state I’m in. Getting better at writing headlines is vital for a blogger but not necessary for someone who writes fiction or poetry. My headlines definitely need improvement if they are to catch any reader’s interest. It would be absolutely essential if I was freelance writing for marketers, something completely unappealing. Maintain your motivation and momentum by doing at least one of these activities each day: Do research for a future piece of writing. Plan an article or chapter or do a character sketch. Write a first draft for something, or do some free writing based on a prompt. Edit an earlier draft written at least one or two days ago. Read something from your writing genre or about the writing craft. Engage with other writers. Participate in an online writing community such as Writing.com I’ve had series of days where I didn’t do any of these things and I didn’t like the result. The more days I neglected writing, the harder it was to return to it. If, during these “off” days, I did too many “left-brain” activities like Sudoku puzzles, I was less inclined to write than if I did something more creative like colouring on my iPad. I don’t write fiction but even reading a novel is better than Sudoku because I’m still engaging with someone else’s writing. When I read too many articles or listen to too many podcasts by professional writers whose goal is to help you succeed in your writing “career”, I feel drained and start wondering why I’m bothering to write at all. I compare my “drive” with theirs and realize that I’m not part of their intended audience. I want to be a “hobby writer”. I want writing to be a significant part of my life but I never intended it to “be” my life. Either I’ll always be a person who juggles many interests or I haven’t yet found my all-consuming “passion”. I find myself forgetting that it’s OK for writing to not be the sum total of my life. Reflection: Do you know why you want to write and who your audience would be?} Which, if any, of the tips in this article are new to you? Which aspect of writing do you find the most challenging? If you don’t write or do writing-related activities regularly, what helps you to get back to writing? If writing is just a “hobby” for you, is this what you want or do you dream of earning income from it? |
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Yes, I know some people do that but I'm a creative writer not a journalist. Poetry sells ... but it's a money-maker for only a few. I write A LOT. Almost 180 pieces since Spring equinox. My goal is 300-400 per year. One year I went over 1,000. I need to do more editing, polishing, sharing, submitting. Writer's block? Who has time for that? I don't.