Today I awoke, saw the world, and wanted to sleep…

There are days when you wake only to find the world seems a heavier place then one you left the night before and your body, not made for this new world, is too weak to maneuver its way through it. Today is one of those days.

Maybe it’s the color of the sky… Yes, I know it is. It’s not bright, not dark, it’s somewhere in-between. The cloud cover moves in like a layer from some atmospheric painting and makes me long for the dream world I left on my pillow. The whole world, every person I pass or watch on the train seems tired. Their all quiet and the scrape of the train’s wheels over the tracks seems more jarring than usual.

This isn’t sadness. I don’t feel it in myself, or see it in the eyes around me. Its weariness, the kind that tells me I’m human, that I’m alive and the world is moving me with it and each year, little by little, my body will grow more tired then it was the year before. Maybe this weight, this emotion I see in so many eyes around me, is the world reminding us that we are all alive and dying at the same time. The world is reaching out today and telling us this with its strange whisper.

I’m looking forward to my pillow tonight and the warmth of my covers. Laying there in the darkness, I’m sure I’ll think how the world is still a lovely place, though at times it sows weariness with abated sunlight and cold air too stale for even the slightest breeze. 

(This post came from a thought jotted down on February 15th.)

10,000 Hours

   This week I started reading Mary E. DeMuth’s 11 Secrets to Getting Published. I’ve been putting off reading this book for awhile; in fact I’ve been putting off reading anything about publishing for the last 3-6 months. The truth is I’ve been too scared. When I started writing my novel, More Than God, in 2007 it was just for fun, just a way to get another story out of my head. (I’ve been making up stories in my head since I was a little girl. They’ve been a way to help me sleep on nights when my brain wouldn’t shut off, or a way to entertain myself on long road trips.) Well, in the last four months I finally sat down and wrote the whole dang story out. I told myself to stop worrying if it was any good, if it made sense, or if I would ever get it published. Publishing became the byword of a death sentence. If I even let any thoughts of it cross my mind I would start to panic and get that tight squeeze in my throat and a tremor in my hands. Heck, I think my eye would even start to twitch. My new ideas could be as easily murdered by the word published, as they could if they were a person shot point blanks by a 9mm semi-automatic. So there it was, I couldn’t write and worry what the next step was going to be at the same time. I couldn’t even think of picking up a book that would tell me how to improve my storytelling, or what steps I needed to take to start down the road to being published. Well on Monday I did. I picked up 11 Secrets to Getting Published and started to read.

            Can I tell you, I was right! Sure enough reading this book has given me a panic attack. I laid awake last night just thinking how I’m never going to make it, that my story is crap, that I should toss the whole thing out and write something else. Thank heavens I’ve already written the thing or I might have curled up in a little ball under my blankets and decided to never write another word again. But after a good nights rest, a few hours at the gym, and a lovely singing session in the shower, I’m ready to think about what Mrs. DeMuth has to say.

            Yes there is a 99% chance my book will never make it any further then some literary agent’s slush pile, there’s a chance I’ll get it out there and people will call it crap, I’ll most likely receive rejection letter after rejection letter, I’ll die and my book will never be seen by anyone other then my dear friends and family. Well, who gives a holy stinking pile of crap! That’s what I said to myself as I looked in the mirror this morning. Who cares? If I never try I’ll never give myself the chance to fail, so by golly I’m going to try. I’m going to do everything I can, and when I fail I’ll know that it was only because I ran out of new strategies. I’ll keep on with editing my story and make sure it’s grammar, characters, and plot are the best they can be. Then I’ll send it out and wait for the wave of rejection letters. I’ll keep going, keep writing, and keep trying.

So where do I start? I start with 10,000 hours.

In Mrs. DeMuth’s book she quotes one of my favorite writers, Malcolm Gladwell. (Love him!) In his book, Outliers, he talks about a study that was done on musical prodigies. They found that these students had all put in 10,000 hours of practice time, and that that was why they had mastered their art. 10,000 hours of practice, that’s all! Sound a bit overwhelming? I thought so. Well it’s what I’m going to do, what I’ve been doing. Sure, I’m not an amazing writer, but I could be if I put in the hours. I’m going to just keep writing and writing. I’ll write something everyday, hence this new blog. Here I can write anything I want to. Katydids are Green is just a random statement that came into my mind, and I hope my posts are just as random. I figure between this, my art history blog, my journal, and my slew of notebooks filled with new outlines and stories, I’ll get my 10,000 hours in before I kick the bucket.

So, here’s to 10,000 hours! Whish me luck!

K.