I have to tell you, I felt good
yesterday for having written in here. My writing muscles (the ones in
the brain) felt a little more oxgenated, even if they were in the
nonfiction section. (I have sometimes been wary of putting a lot of
effort into crafting nonfiction work for publication here. I know I'm
better at personal essays than at fiction, and I think that working on
personal essays leeches energy from fiction. It seems obvious, however,
that since I didn't
do any of this but also precious little fiction work over the winter,
the problem lies elsewhere.)
I looked at the table of contents for this volume,
The Soul Ajar. I started it after a
long hiatus and kept at it because of
Holidailies, the
writing plan devised by an experienced online journaller several years
ago to keep herself working through the busy Christmas season. The
pledge – to post every single day in the month of December. That worked
for me. And so I wondered how I could develop my own plan to
keep myself working through what will be a busy month.
May is going to hold significantly decreased time for pursuing writing.
For the third year in a row I will be
working a temporary full-time job scoring the fifth grade Pennsylvania
System of School Assessment (PSSA) writing test. I wrote about my
experience in
2003,
and I notice just now looking it up that I also wrote about my climb
out of winter depression that year. You'd think I'd learn. Last year,
of course, I wasn't writing at all.
The project starts next week, all day every day, forty hours a week. A
snafu in communications held up my notification of the opportunity, and
my spot on the roster was not confirmed until last week. "I'm glad you
got the job," a friend wrote, "because I know you enjoy it." Well,
"enjoy" is a bit of an overstatement, I told him. I enjoy it for about
three hours, plus lunch and break time. The other four hours of the day
are a repetition of the first, without the joy. But it pays my August
expenses, so I persevere. (The job pays $11.50 an hour if you work the
full forty-hour week. It should be noted that a local school district
is hiring lunch ladies for next year at $12.50. That same friend
observed that for $11.50 I get to sit down and I don't have to wear a
hair net. Maybe that's worth a dollar less.)
So I've thought of a "Holidailies" type of motivation for myself. I'm
calling it "Maylilies," and I'm using the same criteria Jette uses for
Holidailies: I will post a minimum of 20 times between May 1 and May
31, and each post will be a minimum of 50 words. The 50 words part is
easy – I can't say "I'm back" in that small a space. The minimum twenty
times is the challenge. I've made a graphic to decorate the page. See
it on Sunday!
