write 1000 words every day

I put 500 words there today. But I am also counting all the emails I write and entries such as this to at least get close to 1,000 words. Then, I have started to edit the 120,000 words I wrote as email entries while I was in England for a year (themselves edited down from the 300,000 words in total I wrote that year). There is a writing contest on at CBC and I may enter if I think my entry is good enough. It has to be between 2,000 and 2,500 words. Pretty short! But it might be a boost if I win.

I have been reading a blog by a Canadian who lives in Scotland now. She posted some thoughts about history and how they way it was taught (especially in high school) made it so boring. I posted some thoughts to her blog comments and now I am posting them here, a little more refined, perhaps.
She is at: http://www.annaoverseas.com/cgi-bin/mt/mtb.cgi/128

Before I studied art history at university, I thought history was boring. Even when I studied the history of art, I thought “other” history was boring. I now realize that if you try to teach history as an overview, touching on all the detail that makes it “history” to begin with, it is always boring. History only comes alive when you give it a personal perspective. Take the movie called “Longitude” that was shown on A&E some years ago. It was mostly about the fellow who invented a clock that could be accurate at sea and it was fascinating. Any time you show history from a personal perspective, people can relate to it in their own way. If you take out that personal aspect, it automatically becomes dull. Now, historical overviews are used in teaching because they give you all the important points condensed into one semester or book. Even when they go into detail – say the history of just the second world war – they give you the important points, not a personal perspective. And an interesting corollary to that is the objection of groups of people that they are left out of history. Even when you try to do an overview, you have to do it from a particular standpoint and for most of our (North American) history, that standpoint has been that of the British white male. Leaving all the women out of history wasn’t necessarily done on purpose – it was just that the man writing the history wasn’t part of that group. Anyway, if I were teaching history, I would give the overview and then assign several specific books to read to flesh out the bones of the overview. Find books about that period that were written by men and by women and by people of other cultures and people who did research into one interesting aspect of that period. It would be a lot more reading but I bet the students would remember far more about the period than otherwise.

I finally wrote the introduction to my sewing book – 650 words. I may eventually decide to self-publish it because I think it is good and yet I can’t find a publisher who thinks so too.

So I didn’t win the lottery last night and now I have to start writing in Ernest (I always liked that non sequitur “two maggots were fighting in dead ernest”). I actually started a book with the words “once upon a time” yesterday, so I am happy with that. And yesterday I did a post of 800 words to my 43 Things entry of “write 1000 words every day”.

Today, I haven’t even gone outside yet. Pretty pathetic. My excuse is that it is HOT and humid out there. I need to go to Home Depot to get closet fittings but I think that can wait another few days, as I only started thinking about redoing the closets about 5 years ago. I suppose I should go get the mail but since the only thing yesterday was a rejection letter from a prospective employer, there’s not really a great incentive.

So I will do the exercises that a writing instruction book suggested and see what develops from there. I also had some ideas last night while falling asleep, about the intro to my sewing book. I seem to have become enthusiastic again about it and will write that intro today.

Later… No writing done except some emails. I suppose that might count but I shouldn’t let it. Hotter yet at 31C now with a humidex of 40C. Whew. I’ll go check the mail though and that should kick me out of the rut.

August 3
I have come to the conclusion that I need to write for an audience. Even if that is only one person, it is still writing for someone and not for myself. I thought I could write an entry every day and post it on “43 things” under my “write 1000 words a day” category, before I start a blog – if I start a blog. Starting up a blog doesn’t require a domain name or even any money, if you start with one of the free companies. If I ever get bandwidth problems, then I can start spending money on it. In the meantime, I have to write the 1000 words.

Today, I am watering the tomatoes because it hasn’t rained in a while. I also watered the front plants because even when it does rain, they are sheltered by the roof line from getting any water. I did the neighbour’s plants too, as they were looking totally dead and he’s away. The forecast calls for a thunderstorm watch and we had an odd shower that lasted about 5 minutes this morning. But now it is cloudless and I can’t wait for it to rain any longer.

I have some navy patterned fabric laid out to cut into a skirt and top but I think I will instead make a plain white shirt. I think I am still nervous about the navy fabric as it is that crinkly “broomstick” fabric and I don’t know if it will stretch all out of shape after I have cut the pieces. Plus, you can never have too many plain white shirts, that’s what I always say. I might even have enough of this white cotton to get a long sleeved shirt and a sleeveless one out of it – bonus.

I have also started to plan my closet reorganization. The first will be the front foyer closet which is only 46 inches wide – can you believe those builders? I want to raise the hanging rod up about a foot so there will be less wasted space on the shelf above it. We keep baskets there with seasonal stuff in them – bike stuff now, hats and mitts in the winter. And there is about a foot of space above them. It’ll make it a bit harder to access the baskets because we are short people but we can still reach them and pull them down to get what’s in them. Then I will hang another rod a short jacket length away from the high rod so I can cram more jackets in there. Still need tons of room for all the shoes. I don’t know how two people can need so many shoes at the front door – but we do. There’s bike shoes – and P has at least two pair of those, running shoes (I have 2 pair and P has at least 3), sandals, flip flops, lace-up shoes for when it’s cooler. And in the winter…! Yikes.

The second closet will be the upstairs guest bedroom. We hardly ever have guests and I need (want?) a lot of storage space and this closet isn’t being utilized to the max. It also has three sliding doors which overlap most annoyingly. You can only see one third of the closet open at once. I plan to take down the doors and put up a curtain rod (just a simple I-beam) and make curtains for the opening. Then you will be able to see the whole closet at once.

I‘m planning to get the Closet Maid wire organizer system. I used it before in the other house we had and liked it a lot. I don’t know what has been keeping me from starting this project anyway. Well, okay, I do know – I want to rip up all the old carpeting upstairs and replace it with hardwood parquet. I can’t put down wall-to-wall carpet by myself but I CAN put down parquet (I already did it when we renovated the kitchen). I have been thinking that when I rip up the carpet, I will also repaint, and redo the closets. Now I think I can’t wait and don’t have to. I can rip out the old closet fittings, patch and paint the interior of the closet and install the new fittings. Then, when I eventually rip up the carpet, I just have the lift the support pole and do the floors that way. Too easy.

Okay, only 800 words but this has been enough for a start.

Self discipline – what a concept. Just sit in front of the computer and type. How hard can that be? Pretty hard I guess.

A writer writes. I have to get down 1000 words (or more) each day to be able to call myself a writer.