Loving books, abusing “and”
Simple things for simple minds. Not quite the saying from my past that implies the good kind of simplifying everyone’s talking about these days. But sometimes do I feel it!
For example, I’ve found that I can have one, maybe two, writing projects on my plate at a time. So if I’m working on an article for the newsletter (as in the one for next Wednesday), I notice the blog posts totally dry up. Now, the article isn’t done, but it has been kicked off to Lance so I feel a small window of opportunity mixed with duty to write.
It’s interesting how fast a joy can turn into a feeling of obligation when imposed with a production schedule. Vigilance is needed to stay in the right mind set. For me the desired mind set is: I love writing and exploring spontaneously connected thoughts through the written word.
Talking about joy turned repulsion…when I was in high school, I wanted to get out of the house more so I went and got a job at B.Dalton Booksellers. I took Bus line #27 since I was 15 and without car.
Why a bookstore? Because I loved to read and would spend hours cruising the book shelves of bookstores. Make that a super duper lluuuvved to read.
At the time I was into a classics theme. Jane Austin, (oh geez, who did I read? Wow. Twenty+ years can be brutal…really, there were a lot!) then Sidney Sheldon, and Danielle Steele started to creep in. As fascinating as Jane is, she just couldn’t turn a page quite as fast as Danielle.
There was, however, one thing that bugged the heck out of me in her writing. (Do you really need to know this? I can imagine you thinking, “go back to article writing, Shawn”. Wait, am I projecting this on you?) Her use of the word “and”. She abused it mercilessly!
She used it to glue together run on sentences with vigor and she began sentences with it shamelessly. And my English teacher would be appalled if she read it! (And my teacher kept it under wraps if she did read it and I never did find out if she read that stuff.) And every time I sat down to read, the “and”s would jump up like parking lot speed bumps and they’d be even more painful because they’d be flashing bright yellow lights and eventually I’d get caught up in the trashy story du jour and skim over those offending ands, but until then… it was rough I tell ya.
Going back to the sub-plot before the Danielle deviation, you may wonder what happened after two years at the B. Dalton Bookseller job? I lost my taste for browsing bookstore shelves. In fact, I had a hard time going into bookstores for another five years after that.
[side note: I'm really enjoying myself here. Is this OK that you aren't getting some profound piece of simplification wisdom? Well, it is my blog afterall, almost anything goes... Tell you what, let me play just a hair longer then we'll come up with a simplifying principle or thing to be aware of, 'kay? OK, fine, I'll start narrowing down now.]
The point I thought I was going to be exploring was the space where a joy, in my case writing, can turn into an obligation when imposed with a production schedule. How do you keep it fresh and fun? There may be veteran writers out there who poo-poo the very notion. (Do veteran writers poo-poo? “Writing isn’t about “fresh and fun” you frivolous girl!”)
Well, I’m writing my own ticket this lifetime and I do want fun, dagnabit!
You wouldn’t know this unless I told you, but between the time that I wrote “dagnabit” one line above (8:13am) and this word here, a yoga class, speech practice session, lunch, a coffee and three Farmers Market interviews have occurred. At this point, I’m feeling the 5:21 pm Friday mind blur that can’t seem to focus on anything except, when and where’s happy hour.
Hmm, I think I’ll just sign off before this gets anymore awkward. Have a lovely weekend, evening, or day… whatever is stretching out in front of you right now.
I’ll just jumping to the end of the story without further ado: It’s all in the attitude–the lens through which you choose to view the world at any given moment. Let it be fun, and my goodness, people! Let it be easy!! =)
