Category: Writing

Story Ideas, Writing

Writer and Stoic, Thinking …

carolyncordon

I’m enjoying a new philosophical journey these days, now for me anyway. The Stoic movement has been around for over two thousand years, but it’s only this year, that I’ve begun looking further into it. And in looking into it, I was inspired to begin a new blog about it. Thus My Stoic Life.

Some of ideas and ideals of Stoicism definitely appeal to me, and my way of being, and I wonder whether I had somehow become a Stoic accidentally, and am just now realising it. Stoics have been mislabelled in the past, and written off as being people who merely humourless and uncaring.

I mentioned my interest in Stoicism, and was thrilled to receive this book “How to be a Stoic” by Massimo Pigliucci for my birthday, earlier this year. It is an eminently readable and interesting look at being a Stoic in the modern age.

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Stoics can certainly enjoy life, they are not uncaring people, or party poopers. The opposite is true, to some extent. Stoics do care, and they like to enjoy life. But the Stoic way to enjoy life, is to do so in moderation, not going over the top, and suffering in the morning. The Stoic would partake in all in moderation, and so be capable of doing the same thing the next day, instead of suffering from the previous day’s over indulgence!

The Stoic will care about their family, fellow citizens, and friends. They will humane, caring and be sociable. If there were to be a Stoic society, it would be a kind and caring place, with no-one striving for more than anyone else had. People would freely give anything they had in abundance, knowing others wold share their excess freely too.

Stoics value reasonable and rational behaviour, and all things in moderation. Thinking on these things led to creating a new blog, feel free to visit and explore what I have discovered,and what I think about this whole Stoic thing.

I’d love to know what you feel about my Stoical ideas!

Writing

Wasting Words, or Just Wasting Time?

carolyncordon

I am a poet, a blogger, a Facebook User, I use Twitter, I’m writing a novel, I write short stories (sometimes), and I put out a monthly newsletter for my local town. I enjoy doing all of those things, and some of them I do every single day – the Social Media pieces of writing, commenting on Facebook, and tweeting on Twitter. I blog at least every coupe of days, and often post a new blog post once a day or more. I am a writer.

I’m a member of a writing group that meets once a week, and another group that meets once a month, and I will always write something new either at, or for those groups. The thing I most want to be though, I think, is a published novelist. So why don’t I write a novel?

I sort of am, writing a novel. The writing I do at the weekly writing group, is often a short piece that will go into my novel, eventually. I think on the writing prompt for the session, and think on my main characters from my novel, and about what I’ve written so far for my novel, and I write, and there is another fragment of writing for that novel I’m working on.

But is this a way to actually write a novel, I wonder? I have short pieces, perhaps 150 to 300 words, and that’s it. a week or so ago I actually managed to write a new piece for my novel that followed directly from the piece I wrote the week before. I happened to have the same notebook with me, and so it was simple to look at the previous week’s work before starting on the writing exercise for that day.

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I’ve used various notebooks for the writing exercises, and I’ve written other parts of my current work in a file on my laptop. I’ve written other pieces on my phone, other parts on our PC. If I gathered up all of those pieces of writing of that novel, I’m not really sure how many words I’d have. It may be 50 to 60 thousand words. But am I putting all of those bits of writing together? No, I’m not, I’m happily doing other kinds of writing, the blogging, the comments on Facebook, the tweets on Twitter, and the poems at other times.

I’m writing words, but as the title of this blog suggests, I’m wasting my time, if that is what my writing aim is … Or am I? Living my life, thinking about things, being a part of my various communities, these all add to my knowledge of life, and five me ideas about things. And surely writers have to have interesting things to write about, ideas, thoughts.

So perhaps I’m not wasting my words, perhaps I am writing that novel, and perhaps this novel, these characters, will finally make it out into the real world. What do you think? Will Meredith and Travis, my main characters, beat the bad guy, and then finally commit to a relationship together? What do you think?

Writing

We All Feel Guilt At Times

carolyncordon

Guilt is a Human Thing

This is a blog I set up for myself as a writer, and now I seem to have stepped of that track or niche, that of a Writers blog. into the niche of theĀ  New Age/Self Help realm. But fear not, there is method in my ‘madness’.

Guilt and being a writer are two subjects that go together well, with possible deadlines looming for publishers and your books, of for getting something written for a particular purpose, but you’ve spent untold time flaffing around on Social Media, yet again, instead of attended to actually writing something more than comments on somebody else’s ‘thing’.

Then you feel guilty, and hate yourself, and possibly seek solace in the comfort of a much loved blog, or website of some other writer’s. And after some thought, and possibly with reminders from someone else (a publisher wanting that manuscript you promised?), well then you get back to actually doing the writing you were ‘supposed’ to be doing.

But there’s the guilt happening, and surely feeling guilty is a bad and stressful thing, right? Actually, that is only true sometimes. Guilt is very much a human emotion. Animals don’t feel guilt. If you have a dog, and you feel it shows guilt, when you find out it has done a bad thing – eating something meant for the humans, or had an ‘accident’ inside, the dog looks up at you with those big brown guilty eyes, and you may forgive them.

But I don’t think that was guilt. Dogs are excellent at picking up human emotions, and that dog could see and feel your anger and disappointment, at what happened. Not guilty though, that hangdog face on the dog shows it is worried, not guilty. Dogs don’t like it when their owner is upset, they aren’t guilty though, worried about you being upset, or worried about what your actions may be, because they may have learned that when you act like that, they may end up getting a belting, so of course they’re worried.

This is an excellent little post on a website about this matter, I recommend you go have a look. The thing it shows adds to what I wrote about guilt, with a clever little experiment to prove the idea that dogs do not have guilt. They end the post with that silly thing about cats and dogs, where they say cats have staff, not owners, which was actually funny the first thousand times I read it, but hmm, not so much nowadays, but still …

 

Moving Back to Humans

Humans certainly can feel guilt, but that guilt isn’t always a bad and stressful thing. Taking it back to my wasting time on Social Media thing, when a writer (Me/I) wastes writing time of fluff and nonsense, they can hate themselves forever, or they can pull up their socks and get right back into getting that writing done. Books don’t write themselves, books need a writer to write them, before they can get published.

Beating yourself up with guilt, and not getting on to that writing asap won’t help at all. It may cause you stress, and stress is certainly not a good thing for anyone, whether they are writer or not. A stressed body is an unhealthy body, if we’re talking about mental stress. A stressed body, can become a body burdened with illness. Be careful of yourself, and stay away from bad stress!

Good stress, as that website post explains, can be beneficial though, so if you can use stress in good ways, excellent, well done, it may be the thing you need to get, and keep you on track with your writing!

 

A Happy Ending to the Story

So all of this can tell you that getting on with your writing instead of flaffing around online (or in other, non-productive ways), these things can cause guilt and stress. That guilt/stress dynamic can be a thing that breaks you down, or it can be a thing that makes you stand up tall and resolute, to get you right back on track with your writing!

20190505_114825And getting you writing written, surely that is a great thing if you are a writer! Buster the Dog, who lives inside my head, who has helped me write three dog-related books so far, he says ‘Woof!, get on with it Human, write those words, then take me for a walk!’

 

Writing

Molly’s Story Shifted, But Back Here Again

carolyncordon

My “This is Molly” story had a brief move to another of my blogs, one which deals with abuse, sexual abuse against children initially, but other forms of abuse later on. It seemed like a better spot for Molly’s story, but on further thought, I’m back to feeling the ‘story’ should be here, on my writer blog.

That other blog, https://wordpress.com/view/damagedchildrenpreciousgems.wordpress.com got its name from the poetry collection I had published quite a few years back, and I have gained much from having written and shared the words. Life isn’t always lovely, and when you can show that bad times can have a better way to go, it can be helpful for other people, and I am glad to know of women I have helped with this book.

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This is Molly. She has had a hard life, and it shows …

 

So I’ve decided this blog is the best place for Molly and her story.

Molly has had a tough life, and Molly shows her reactions to that in her face. Molly’s face has had smiles, but that was a long, long time ago. She’d love to have a reason to smile just once as an adult, it would be a good thing, a new thing, but her smiles were as a child and they were few and far between, even then.

Keep a look out here, and you sill see some more of Molly’s story. I truly hope Molly can have a happy ending, but I can’t see it going that way, not yet. Poor Molly, domestic violence is a terrible thing, and even though there are groups and programs to help victims of DV, it is never an easy thing to get over.

Hearing about the lives of people who haven’t had things as easy as we have, may bring a better understanding to people, and empathy as well. When things are bad, you need all of the help you can get. People like Molly may not smile and say thank you, but that doesn’t mean they aren’t grateful. They may not think the help will continue, based on their life experience …

If Molly and her story are like your own story, I hope you are able to get the help you need. If not, some of these links may be of help: click here

 

 

 

Writing

As A Writer, I …

carolyncordon

In my blog post before last, I wrote about the idea that what writers are simply people who write. Whatever genre or form they write in, if they write, then they are writers. I’ve been doing some research this morning (by research I mean – wandering around the internet). What this ‘research’ has made me think, or realise, is that people are strange, and they are normal, and they are wrong, and they are right, and that I am all of those things too.

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I read a Facebook post, a random one, where someone posted a comment telling she had breast-fed her two children for twenty months each, and by her calculations, she had produced a particular number of litres of breast milk. This statistic seemed weird for a number of reasons, but there were other people on that Facebook page who didn’t seem to think what she’d written was odd.

So that got me thinking – if they didn’t think it odd, what right did I have to think it was? And then that got me thinking, hmm, I could write something about that, because I’m a writer, and having things to write about is one of the things I am always looking for. And that led me to the heading for this particular blog post “As A Writer …”.

Because as a writer, I sometimes do things that most other people may never think about doing. I look at things quite deeply, sometimes, with no other aim but to know more about it, and how it may affect an invisible person or thing that is in my head, ie a story character I have.

And as a writer I actively don’t want a full time job, because that would completely take away too much potential writing time. I know there are some writers who have full time jobs, people are different, I know that. And as a writer, I am thrilled that people are different, because that means I can make my characters do all kinds of different things, sometimes things I’ve never done, but want to know more about.

As a writer, it can be my job to find out about such things, find out for my characters, and for the story, or for an article or a blog post. That breast feeding mother I mentioned before had a job title that completely surprised me, and as a writer, I will probably look further into that job, and what it entails, well, I might do that anyway.

As a writer though, I may find some other eye-catching job title, and research that one instead. I have a novel I’m working on at the moment, and I can’t see how that snippet of information would fit in, so I may just leave it and follow up if it ever feels relevant. As a writer, I can wander the world, online, or for real, and I could be working as I travel. As a writer, I am always working, potentially, even if it looks like I am being a tourist.

I’ve been reading about Stoicism lately, and as a writer, I am finding many worthwhile ideas there, especially the ideas about having meaning and purpose in life, beyond the day to day things. The Stoics believe in wisdom, ethics, having courage, justice, and temperance. I feel these things are the best way to go personally, if I am to be the best person I can be.

As a writer, I feel that part of my task with my writing is to teach, to interest, and to inspire my readers. I may not write directions on how to be a better person (although some of what I write may help there), what I am doing, or aiming to do with my writing is to open up hearts and minds, to the millions of ways to be, and ideas for leading a better, or more worthwhile life.

So really, the point of this blog post is to reinforce the idea that if you are, or want to be a writer, the world the there waiting for you, so pick up your pen, or your keyboard, and, as a writer, do your thing!