Chapter 1: Onward!
Goooooooooooood morning, afternoon, or evening, wherever you might happen to be!
Last week was rough. But I’m grateful to have had support, including from you—many thanks to those who reached out with kind messages!
This week I’m trying to get things rolling once more, and I hope I can help you to do the same. And I’ve got good news for the long run, too: it looks like Page by Page will be sponsoring a series of online workshops on how to write a book, starting in early May! So stay tuned for more information about the first dates, which I’ll share via the newsletter (and please do share the information with anyone you think would be interested).
Keep track of things
‘Measure what you want to matter’. That’s writer Caitlin Kunkel’s advice in her latest Substack, ‘Input/Output’. And it’s good advice! If you find ways of keeping track of your methods and madness, you’ll quickly begin to see patterns that can help you optimize your research and writing. Maybe it’s how many words you write per day, or how many articles you read per week. Figure out what you want to keep track of and you just might improve how you work.
In my case, the thing I want to measure is exactly how many tasks I’ve got to do in a given month or week, and how many I can get done in a given week or month. Each week, for example, I try to set out my writing goals, and I cross them off my list as soon as they’re complete (I love using ‘strikethrough’!!). I’m motivated by what I’ve been able to complete, and reminded of what I still need to get done. Better still, I get a sense of how quickly I can finish a particular type of task, which helps me when I’m planning future projects.
Comfort food
I don’t know what came over me this week (oh, I don’t know, Mary—stress?), but I found myself hankering after snickerdoodles. Those slightly-sour-but-also-cinnamony delights were on my mind! So I tracked down my favourite recipe and got baking. This recipe makes a healthy number of treats, so you might even have enough to share….
A good laugh
Ok, this one is a bit silly, but I really couldn’t help laughing at Graham Techler’s piece in The New Yorker’s ‘Daily Shouts’: ‘I Know I Wasn’t Supposed to Tell Hannibal Lecter About My Personal Life, But I’m Not Used to Men Being Such Good Listeners’. I was laughing as soon as I read, ‘I get that now.’
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VB,
M