Today is a Snow Day!

I’m taking an unexpected day from teaching at the university. Today was supposed to be my first class day of the semester (I teach Tuesday/Thursday and keep office hours on Monday). Instead, I am sitting at home listening to Classical Motivation and typing this in my sweats. I am enjoying a snow day, the dreams of children and teachers of all ages.

It feels strange to hype myself up for teaching only to not teach. I feel disorganized, although I can teach this stuff with my eyes closed. Though it’s nice to have an accidental break. And the snow is pretty.

I sit at my computer and write this blog, feeling ahead of the writing-related things I do. I have written character sketches for my two main characters for Kringle Through the Snow, so I’m closer to writing that book. (Next, break my procrastination. Or take a nap, because this day is a gift.)

Saturday Morning at my House (Creative Essay)

Mind the clutter on the coffee table.

Welcome to my Saturday morning.

It’s 8 o’clock AM, and my husband and I won’t go out today because of the ice and sleet from yesterday and the potential snow today. It’s a good excuse, anyhow.

We lounge in the living room under low light. The fake fireplace and a piney Woodwick candle create ambience. Tony Bennett sings “Darn that dream” and we chuckle at the song’s quaint language. Chucky sits on the edge of the cluttered coffee table, managing to knock only one thing down.

The coffee today is from Burundi, home roasted and ground, and I can taste notes of lemon, cooked apples, and spice. Tony Bennett has segued into a mellow jazz tune.

I’m in my writing corner on the loveseat typing this. When I’m done I will go back to my developmental edits, which are going smoother than I thought. Today is an enforced retreat day, for which I’m grateful.

Self-doubt

I am re-editing Apocalypse, which originally was two novels until I realized the first novel would fit into the second one nicely. I intended this to be the next developmental edit until I got swamped with self-doubt during the editing:

Is the premise asking people to suspend disbelief too readily? Is the plot evolving too fast? Did I lose too much in the edit? Should I just give up writing?

Any writers who read this will understand self-doubt, the plague of writers everywhere. Or is it?

If self-doubt becomes the cloud of negative self-talk with generalizations like “I can’t write”, “I’ll never get the hang of it,” and “my work sucks”, self-doubt is a plague that should be banished along with overcooked green beans and day-long meetings. Cognitive distortions (overgeneralization, all or nothing thinking and name-calling in the example presented) provide no real information to help us improve and only serve to make us feel bad.

But there’s healthy self-doubt, the part that helps us edit the self-indulgent pieces out of our writing, the ones that help us bridge gaps in plot, flesh out characters, and make our books better than we thought they could be.

May we only have good self-doubt.

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Today’s weather (snow and ice) has left me with an unscheduled writing retreat at home. I’m not complaining at all.