The Memoir Monday feature will be posted every other Monday. Sometimes very late in the day 🙂
Sometimes I send out an almost empty blog post, maybe a nice photo…actually, I have never sent out an almost empty blog post. I’m a writer. I write.
However, it is almost 9:30 at night in the Pacific Northwest of the United States…even if I were to get it out by 10, you are probably in bed then and won’t read it until Tuesday.
Here’s where I’m at. I have more memoir notes to post, and I even cut and pasted some in at first. Then, I get that ugly feeling that nothing I say is going to move you or entertain you. I have spent most of the day, on and off, at this desk. It hasn’t helped. Every start is a false start. I scanned for interesting memoir news and found some interesting bits. Then I erased them. I have a handful of online friends who are about to, or have published memoirs. I could add links to their books or sites. I can’t.
Here’s what I’ve learned today. Have scheduled posts ready at least three days in advance. What if you wake up and other things are weighing so heavily on your mind, that the scheduled post is just frozen inside you? You bomb.
I bombed, but I will be back to try Memoir Monday again in two weeks. Meanwhile, I hope you had a good Memorial weekend.
Patti
The picture is from WWI, part of a collection that my aunt was selling at the swap meet.
THE WRITE PLACE... 
May 26, 2014 at 11:02 pm
Perhaps… just perhaps… the scheduling is interfering with the creative process? I’m not a writer by any academic sense… Yet, 3-weeks ago, I told ‘my audience’ that I would be going idle, but I would still be there checking in regularly; I was pressuring myself to perform… and I stopped… I doubt it was a day later, and I had a renewed eye, and ear… I’ve been mostly ‘on’ since then…
You’ve already earned your recognition, and your followers, as I have earned high-status too, and the friends a many… There’s a compulsion to keep driving from that level… like the pressure is on…
I’m quite sure that publishing is a whole other ‘ball of wax’… but I have to tell you… Dear Patti… be the you that got you here in the first place… that will be the you that get’s you there tomorrow… you’re refining and building every day… so long as you’re living your life (not manufacturing it)… this will continue as it is natural, right, and good…. and so it follows…
Emotions of any sort are great for getting the muse busy… perhaps you’ve yet to reconcile with the possibility that you feel better, or aren’t prepared to re-immerse yourself in the earlier pain… you’ve put much momentum in these memoirs, yet I offer and opine… momentum is not drive… it may even just be the failing of your brakes…
Forgive me please, as I am both ‘shooting in the dark’ and ‘grasping at straws’…
Move your mind out of the way for a moment, and let your heart speak…
Besides, when have you not moved, or entertained us? Take a chance… fail miserably if it comes to that…
You can’t fail unless you quit…
I have spoken… 😉
-The Great and Powerful Oz
Click those heels, girl! “There’s no place like home”
May 26, 2014 at 11:05 pm
Thanks, M! Just a momentary laps, but I do appreciate the kind and thoughtful words 🙂
May 26, 2014 at 11:25 pm
We all have moments and days like this Patti. I just have crossed fingers that you haven’t woken up with other things weighing heavily on your mind.
I can’t schedule my posts in advance as they depend upon what happens in a day but I always make them the last thing I do at night so that when I publish them all on a Saturday it’s night here and won’t be read until Sunday but for you it’s still Saturday daytime. Heaven knows what it is in Australia.
You have a good following and we’re all prepared to wait until you’re ready rather than pressure you to post.
xxx Massive Hugs xxx
May 26, 2014 at 11:37 pm
Thank you, David, I know it will all be fine. Just a momentary glitch.
Hugs back and an extra one,
P
May 26, 2014 at 11:26 pm
I keep this reminder in my files for just such a time I experience a lapse or block as you describe:
“But sometimes when I was starting a new story and I could not get it going, I would
sit in front of the fire and squeeze the peel of the little oranges into the edge of the
flame and watch the sputter of blue that they made. I would stand and look out
over the roofs of Paris and think, ’Do not worry. You have always written before
and you will write now. All you have to do is write one true sentence. Write the
truest sentence that you know.’ So finally I would write one
true sentence, and then go on from there.”
~ Ernest Hemingway, A Moveable Feast
I agree with your first commenter: You can fail unless you quit and you’re no quitter, Patti. Thanks for your presence on my blog. I appreciate it!
May 26, 2014 at 11:39 pm
Great quote, Marian. I have no intentions of quitting, just allowed myself a moment to not produce as planned. Thank you for your encouragement and being here, as always.
P
May 27, 2014 at 7:03 am
Love the photo. Look forward to seeing you when you return Patti. I know the feeling…
May 27, 2014 at 9:27 am
Thanks, Sherri.
May 27, 2014 at 10:28 am
No worries, Patti. We all have off days. (Heck, I’ve been having off weeks lately!) Sometimes it helps, as you said above, to allow yourself a moment to not produce as planned.
May 27, 2014 at 10:34 am
Thanks, Miranda, always good to know others are in the boat with you. Hope you brought the paddles! 🙂
P
May 28, 2014 at 5:03 am
Don’t box yourself in too closely with your posts, either the timing or the content. Occasionally I’ll get inspired and write three blog posts which I then save as drafts. Eventually I publish them, but they can be very different posts. Right now I have a book review waiting in the wings (waiting for what, I’m not sure, but waiting nonetheless) and recently I published a post about bicycling that I had worked on bit by bit for a number of days. Nothing to do with writing except that I had to write a few words around pictures of my husband’s bike. But it was fun. Anyway, my point is that you might consider just writing a few posts when you have the time and energy and then either schedule them or save them as drafts to publish when you want. It could help avoid the pressure of feeling you have to post something specific on a specific day. We are not machines.
*Hugs*
May 28, 2014 at 11:19 am
Great, great advice, Marie! Thank you.
Hugs back,
P
May 28, 2014 at 7:56 am
While at the SCN Conference, I committed to blogging daily. The results astonish me. I have gained, on average, more than one new follower per day.
May 28, 2014 at 11:25 am
There is no doubt that the more I frequently I post, the more people who join our community. The only time I have notice that I lost someone, was when there was a long interval between posts. I’ve done every day for a month, for several challenges, and it was tough!
Thanks for chiming in, Juliana!
P
May 28, 2014 at 6:55 pm
The point is to push ourselves, but not to be too hard when we can’t do it all.