March 29, 2002
Tonight in the video store my husband and I were debating over which movie to rent.
“Why don’t we get that movie that our friends recommended to us called Office Space,” I said.
“I don’t think you’d like it.” he replied.
“Why not?”
“Well, you wouldn’t understand it, you wouldn’t get the jokes. It has to do with office stuff.”
I just looked at him for a moment and then said with a grin, “I used to work in an office you know.”
He just looked at me for a moment, slightly dumbfounded and said, “I totally forgot. I don’t even think of you as an Office Girl at all. To me, you’re just the writer and you always have been. I forget that you were once in the 9-5 grind.”
“Thank you,” I said as I hugged him.
“For what?” he asked.
“For giving me the nicest compliment I’ve heard in a long time.”
March 25, 2002
For the first time in over a year, I read a book for the pure joy of reading.
It had nothing with how to sell articles, grammar, writing structure, book proposals, marketing, design, inspiration, creativity or writing.
In fact, it was a book about whaling and it was read in less than a day.
I used to read extensively for enjoyment but since my official launch as a writer I instead began to use books as study and work tools. I thought if they didn’t benefit me by helping me learn how to be a better writer, than I wouldn’t read it. My once varied book collection became a whose who of creative self-help books and reading became a chore rather than a joy.
It came to the point where I started to actually loathe reading altogether. The self-help books on writing had become repetitive and rather than inspiring me, they bored me. That’s when I picked up a copy of In the Heart of the Sea and read it straight through, without even stopping for lunch.
My brain enjoyed the break, of being taken someplace different than a writer’s life. I was relaxed after, content and I think there was even a smile on my face. I had enjoyed reading! It was such a big deal because it had been so long since I had read a piece of non-fiction that I forgot how much I enjoyed it. Something I’ll remind myself often by reading more and more of it.
I’ve always wanted to be a varied writer, with no special area of interest. However, if I just kept reading on how to be a writer, I don’t think my writing would ever really improve. Instead, it would work itself into a pattern and would fall into one category – a self-help writer.
I don’t want that to happen so I’m going to get back into reading. It’s not only essential for my career, but for my own, selfish enjoyment.
March 24, 2002
During my stint in Corporate America, I frequently took vacations. As soon as I came home from one I’d start planning another. Sometimes they were just quick weekend get aways and sometimes they were two-week holidays somewhere warm. It seemed like every couple of months I was going somewhere.
However, since I’ve been working on my own, I haven’t even taken an overnight trip. Everything’s been work and taking time away from it would leave me feeling guilty – as though I hadn’t earned the right to take a holiday.
But I realised that everyone needs a break, especially me. Sometimes I tend to discard all my work because I haven’t been paid or there’s no exact way to monitor what I’m doing. However I have put so much effort into this, racking my brain day and night, making sacrifices, learning about myself and my business, that I figured it’s time to take a break.
I planned a five-day getaway to San Francisco. It had warmth, sun, art, relaxing streets and good friends. I planned the days so we’d be doing some things and sometimes doing nothing at all. And I promised myself that if we weren’t doing anything more than taking an afternoon nap in the hotel that I’d enjoy it, guilt free. I had earned time off and I had to make the best of it.
I began to make hotel reservations and after I did something clicked in my head. I’m a travel writer! So I emailed the sales and market department of the hotel, told them who I was and requested a media package. Four days later, I had one.
When I received this package I felt giddy. For the first time I honestly felt like a travel writer. I read through the information and became completely excited. Then I became confused. I had told myself it wouldn’t be a work trip, but now it was looking like that wouldn’t be the case. If I were a travel writer, wouldn’t I have to write about the hotel while I’m there? Wouldn’t I have to pay extra attention to all the details and carry a pocketbook around to note everything I saw?
I also began to worry that if I didn’t do that, the hotel would find me out. They would say, “Aha! You’re not a travel writer! We’d like our media package back please!”
Up until the day of travel I was nervous about how to combine the work with pleasure, unsure if it could be done. Especially since I’m still learning how to balance.
But once I hit the San Francisco sun, there were no worries. I relaxed, I smiled, I giggled and most of all, I enjoyed myself.
We spent the first few days driving around different places, staying with family and friends. I was able to relax so much and rest my brain, I actually noticed more than usual. And more importantly, what I noticed actually stuck in my brain.
When we arrived at our hotel in San Francisco, I became nervous. Did I look like a travel writer? Did I talk like a travel writer? Because although I’ve been working on my travel portfolio and have been writing articles that I will soon send out, I have to be officially published as a travel writer. I began to fear they’d think I was lying and ask me to leave the hotel.
But they didn’t. I even was upgraded.
I continued to relax and enjoy my trip. The more I relaxed the more I noticed and the more I actually remembered. Instead of stressing out over every detail, I enjoyed it. It was the first time in a long time that I had private thoughts and didn’t worry about putting them in an article.
I had new experiences that refreshed my mind and reenergised my creativity. I got to be Alex for five days instead of Alex the writer and that felt really good.
When I returned home, I was excited to get back to work. Instead of planning for the next vacation, I eagerly began to write about the one I just had. Even though I hadn’t taken one single note, I remembered even the smallest details of the room, the food and the whole city. I especially remembered how I felt, and that’s probably the best memory of all.
This trip helped me to realise that I do need a break every now and then, just like everyone else. It also helped me to realise that travel writing is really what I want to do, and will be good at. I love to travel, I love to notice things, and I love to encourage others to take time out and visit some place new – even if it’s just encouraging myself.
The old saying is to do what you love to do and figure out how to get paid for it. I figure I’ve spent enough of my years travelling for free that it’s now time to make some money at it. And I really believe that I can do that now, because I’m at the stage where I can enjoy the work side and the personal side. And that’s the trick I had to learn and finally did.
March 19, 2002
It is raining like mad, the wind is howling through my flat and my feet haven’t been warm all day. But that doesn’t seem to matter because I’ve spent the morning working and just began to sink myself into SARK’s new book, Prosperity Pie.
I have to admit to being particularly giddy over page 194. Because on page 194, next to names and websites that I have long admired, is my little URL, sitting quietly there in the book.
A part of me feels like I need to start creating more right away to live up to having my url there, but another part of me can’t stop smiling at the discovery while trying to make the moment last forever.
March 18, 2002
It’s time to weed out my book collection, which has grown by leaps and bounds this past year. It’s time to choose which books I want to keep and which ones will be sold to the second-hand bookstore down the street. Most of the books I decided to sell were the ones that were so crucial and biblical to me last year when I began my journey from Corporate dropout to freelance writer – the ones on how to write.
When I first began to write for a living, I wasn’t sure of the steps I needed to take to be a writer, sell my work and make money. I believed there had to be a right way to write and a wrong way to write, the way it was in my corporate days, when there were certain times I showed up to work, certain times I took lunch, specific ways I could write reports, and specific ways I could took notes.
At first, I needed direction, badly. I was certain that I didn’t know the right way to go about “being a writer.” I was so insecure and needed reassurance and I believed that I would find support from the voices of experienced writers who wouldn’t just offer me advice, but tell me how to do it. And so, my trips to bookstores became less for pleasure and more for work. I became obsessed with biographies, how to’s and self help books on writing and dug endlessly around bookstore shelves for answers.
One of the first books I read on writing was Julia Cameron’s The Artist Way. In her book, she offered the advice of writing several pages about anything on large blank sheets of paper each morning. Her idea was planted into my brain as a surefire way to help me grow as a writer and so each morning I began to write my “morning pages.” I was a dedicated morning page writer for about two days until I failed at it because writing on three blank pages at 8am does not work for me. I once heard a famous writer declare that she broke for tea at 9am every morning and then so did I, until would realise that 3pm works better for me.
After hearing the success of first time author J.K. Rowling, I immediately researched how she wrote. I found that she wrote in several large blank books of which I bought a dozen and she also mentioned how she wrote almost every page of each of her novels in a café. Of course, I had to try this despite the fact I knew I wrote better in solitude. I was afraid my writing wouldn’t be as good as hers if I couldn’t hack the romance of writing in a cafe.
Any author who gave advice on writing, I would take it. I thought if they were able to write a book about it, they had to know how to do it, and the only way I too could be a writer was if I wrote just like them. So instead of trying to find my own voice, I listened to those of others which made me feel less like a writer and more of copycat. By trying to write as others did, I began to feel like a failure because none of their methods fit me.
I couldn’t write with glitter pens, I couldn’t write in bed, I couldn’t write in cafés and I couldn’t write three large pages about nothing every day.
After eight months of little writing and lots of frustration I threw my hands in the air and tossed all the books to the back of the closet and gave up on trying to fit some image that I felt I couldn’t be.
When I did that, a strange thing happened – I started to find my voice.
I wrote as I needed to – in front of a computer screen, in silence with a small idea planted in my mind. I would begin to type out my thoughts out and nurture them along until they grew into words that would become an article. Then I would submit the article to magazines and to my surprise, some of my articles were accepted for publication.
By simple writing as I needed to, doing what worked for me, and seeing results from doing that, I was able to stop feeling as though I was doing it all wrong but in fact, doing something right.
The more I worked, the more comfortable I became with how I worked. And slowly I realised that the simplest, easiest way to “officially” be a writer was just to write.
Despite the fact I had been brave enough last April to declare myself a writer and leave my corporate job to pursue writing full time, I had been so insecure in the beginning that I forgot to trust myself enough to know how to write. I looked outside of myself for the answers and the knowledge on how to write, when the truth is, I knew it all along.
The schedule I currently keep isn’t found in any book. I start around 8am and finish up around 4pm. I break for tea at 3 o’clock without fail, and I actually take weekends off. I scribble haphazardly in fifteen million different notebooks – some blank, some with lines, some cheap, and some coloured marvelously. I don’t do morning pages and I stay out of cafés except for late night dates with my husband.
That’s what works for me and I no longer question if that’s how a real writer would do it because I’m a real writer, and that is how I do it.
So now, the books that were so vital to me in the beginning will be finding a new home this weekend. They weren’t all bad because they sprouted a few ideas that I’ve incorporated into my writing routine. This was the best way for me to use those books, instead of as gospel. Because the answers I seek, the reassurance I need, and bravery I crave will never be completely found in someone else’s book. Only mine.
Elsewhere