life / writing

productivity, yoga pants, and camp nanowrimo

• by kerri

Good morning, April.

[That sounds like I’m writing to a person instead of a month.]

Somehow, this morning I was out of bed by 8:45—miraculous, really, as I shut down SleepCycle at 8:32. I proceeded to eat a chocolate chip cookie, and sit down and write 555 words. By 10:30 AM. While still wearing yoga pants. 

I’ve just smashed a theory here, people. My theory was “I can’t be productive if I’m wearing sweat pants.” (Unless per chance yoga pants are a magically productive form of sweat pants?).

Through university, I also had this thing in my head where I could not wear sweatpants to class unless obviously a) I was in the gym for class, b) I had a lab (which would have amounted to either a physical activity related lab OR anatomy lab. Anything goes in anatomy lab, really.) or, on very few occasions, c) I was sick (and by sick, I mean actually sick—like on prednisone sick, or I-went-to-class-the-day-after-emergency-surgery sick. Not “Real People Sick”). Sweat pants were also allowed in exams, of course.  Except the one time for my Sport Psychology exam (my last ever exam) where I wore my Boston Marathon jersey from Steve and tried to wear sweat pants but that was actually too comfortable, so I put jeans on before I even left the house. Can’t be too comfortable in an exam—the Boston jersey had just enough proper vibe for sport psych. (This was also the exam where I got a whole freaking classroom to myself because of accommodations, except unlike the usual testing rooms, it had windows. I’m sure I stared out them for a bit.)

Anyways, it’s Camp Nanowrimo time, and I am (as I was in November) trying to complete Nanowrimo. 10K words in 30 days. (Completing Nanowrimo is called winning. Except as I learned in sport psychology, and other classes, survey says kids say that having fun is more important than winning, so I plan to have fun?). Perhaps to add to the success is being in Camp Nanowrimo Cabin with 11 others attempting to write young adult books this month.

Maybe if I get ambitious (and keep up the momentum towards 1,667 words per day), I should Blog Every Day April along with NaNoWriMo. Too much? Probably. Though last night’s post did go up at 12 AM, so I’ve actually done two posts today.

writing

“i scratched these words into a black notebook…”: on notebooks.

• by kerri
Despite the increased digitization of everything, I still have a very intense attraction to notebooks. While I have many pretty, brightly coloured, designed notebooks, I sometimes am drawn more to actually writing in plain black ones (of which I have dozens). Of course, they all look the same on the inside, pretty much.
 
“I scratched these words into a black notebook…”
—last straw, jack’s mannequin 
 
 
 
I also have this tendency to abandon notebooks—from the ten-cent coil bound (no, I def didn’t pay $0.90!) to the Moleskines–much like my tendency to abandon projects partway through, notebooks often begin as projects. Even journals, occasionally these notebooks become abandoned with desire to start a new chapter—or because I find it more convenient to write and organize using Evernote (and its notebook/note system). I can also type faster than I can write—and I can certainly think faster than I can type at many times.
 
For 2015, I have started a new Evernote notebook; for the last few days I have been brainstorming a rejuvenation of this blog—mostly post ideas and themes to keep me on track and better motivated to blog. While my friend Scott has said that your blog is your blog and you can do what you want with it (which is, if you want to abandon it for weeks/months/years and return, hey, it’s your blog), one thing that I constantly reflected on in 2014 was that I wished I were blogging more. Once school finished, I felt like I had more time to blog, yet little to say. Once I left my job, I felt like I had even less to say—I began the Quantify This. blog, but even that in the aftershocks was difficult to stick to. So here I am again: with more of a plan, but hoping that I can maintain the low-pressure of blogging while producing more content.
I hope to tell some of the stories that I’ve yet to tell. Some of these stories will perhaps need to be harvested out of old notebooks, and others will just happen when they happen. I’m not going to force it out, but i’m going to try a bit harder on days where I just don’t feel like blogging but am scheduled to post (I’m aiming [flexibly] for Monday/Tuesday/Thursday/Saturday), because writing is kind of like working out that way: getting started can be the hardest part, and once you’re moving, it happens.
 
And, perhaps in the process I will launch a purple or black pen into one of these notebooks… A completely clean break…
 
 
 
…Or reopen this one that I left off at a place of unrest: 
 
 
(Yes, how appropriate.)
 
2015: let’s do this. A time to reconnect, on many levels… And writing more should help me figure out where I’m at on many levels as well…