Ten months of daily writing, and what a strange month it’s been.

As I mentioned, I decided to step up my morning pages, and in March started writing daily scenes. The first half of the month was interesting, purely on the writing front…

• I feel like writing a scene a day rather than writing about my own life opened me to thinking about stories throughout the day. It turned my imagination on in the morning so I was in that mindset more, and more easily, all day. I initially thought doing the brain dump style of writing would clear everything out of my mind so I could focus on fiction, but it seemed to just get me more into my own head.
• I started writing… poetry? Like, not as my morning pages, but after the fact. Which I think goes back to the first point, of just opening my mind to creativity, and it coming out in a different form of expression.
• I noticed that there were days I continued a theme or a character. Not enough to complete a story, yet, but they were interesting explorations that could possibly be fleshed out into character studies or test scenes.

It’s hard to stay creative when the world is rapidly changing every day, every hour. And it’s hard to write morning pages when your morning routine… isn’t a routine anymore. When you wake up and walk a ten foot commute to your desk, and work more because there’s more to do, because you need to be available, because you’re rushing to fill those gaps that had never previously been considered. So I regressed to the brain dump method for the last week and a half, and still writing seemed like a chore. I’m still doing it, even if the habit I was forming is now a “whenever” and “whatever”. And the sad (beneficial?) truth is that we can adapt to anything, so I can carve a routine out of my current situation and get myself back on track. Things look different now, and it’s a strange new normal, but my brain is still functioning, my shoulders are less tense (some days), and I’m still writing.

Back in 2008 I started a blog, Allison Writes, just to have a place to put my thoughts. I had been online journaling off and on since Diary-x was a thing, and LiveJournal still holds a major piece of my heart. I’ve made many good friends through LiveJournal and the blogs that came after, and still follow/read many of them to this day. That’s to say nothing of the “online friends” who became “real” friends.

And that’s just a tiny fragment of my thoughts on this “heyday” concept. It seems harder to really connect with people online these days, even though it is now acceptable to make friends and dates online. My first few online friends and I totally lied about how we met to others in the beginning, because everyone thought that everyone else on the internet was a murderer catfishing you (though that term became common much later) and you were crazy and pathetic to make friends online. I even told my roommates that I met a date in line at the post office (what?!) to cover that we met online. For all the good the internet brought into my life, that was definitely a weird period of time…

But I digress. I’m not talking about having to cover up making online friends – I’m talking about making them in the first place. Or, more specifically (and more selfishly), how much I used to love blogging. Everything I did and thought was a blog post. Was this because I was 20 and thought I was the most interesting person ever? Maybe. (Probably.) Was this because it was 2008 and it was fun to read random, mundane shit about people you don’t know online? Also maybe.

In 2008, I wrote at least 3 posts a week, and was scheduling them way in advance because I had so much to say. Now, I aim to write 2 a month here, and on my book blog, and often wait until the last minute to meet that goal.

In 2008, I didn’t share my last name, but I posted pictures galore – of myself, my apartments’ interiors, my beer flights, my friends. Now, my last name is in my URL, but good luck finding a “selfie” of me – even on my own phone. Again, is part of this because I was 20 and thought I was fascinating and cute? Maybe. Probably. And now I am just boring and frumpy, and my web presence reflects that.

But also! The internet isn’t what it used to be. I understand that everything was always public (except perhaps “friends-only” LiveJournals) and could be found by anyone – randomly or on purpose. But somehow it still managed to feel like a fun little club where you met cool people who liked the same things as you and commented on your blog posts and wrote things you were interested in so you could comment on theirs, too. And thus a friendship was born, and sometimes you became closer and sometimes you guest-posted and sometimes you even met in person. And when you met, you knew intimate (depending on the blog and the person) details about someone you were just now seeing in the flesh. And it was amazing and intoxicating and totally changed how you formed relationships.

Because now, the internet seems cold and corporate, and blogs seem either boring or the equivalent of glossy magazine ads. Aka either too real or not real at all. You can make friends on Instagram, or keep up with the friends who used to write blogs you loved, but it’s too easy to scroll, click a heart (or double-tap the image if you have clumsy thumbs), and move on, without reading the caption below. Some people bill Instagram as “micro-blogging”, but is it really?

I try to avoid the hassle by using Instagram for book reviews. I don’t mind scrolling and liking a photo of a book I want to add to my TBR pile, or a book I just read and loved. I don’t mind scrolling and stopping to read the caption accompanying a cover that caught my eye. And I even tried to avoid the hassle by shutting down my personal blog in 2015 and only posting on my book blog, connected to said bookstagram. That’s why it’s hard to find a selfie of me – I’d rather share book covers and my thoughts on those books, which I still post on the blog because old habits die hard and, to be honest, I don’t want to inconvenience anyone mindlessly scrolling on Instagram. Do they want to read all my thoughts and feelings on this book? Maybe not. But if they click to my blog, they’ll get what they came for.

It’s a weird attitude to have towards social media, I know. (And don’t even ask me about Facebook, where tumbleweeds blow across my account.) And I’m sure I’m viewing things from 2008-2011 through rose-colored glasses. And I’m sure that mostly, I just miss the act of sitting down at the keyboard every few days and having thoughts spew from my fingers and me thinking I’m interesting and funny, instead of criticizing every word my pen puts on paper, editing before the sentence is done.

So before you ask, it’s not you, Internet, it’s me.

I’ve been writing every day for nine months now. It’s an accomplishment, and I should be proud (and I am…), but in true me fashion, I have to analyze it to death.

See, I’ve been writing morning pages. Sure, I’m getting up before 5:30am and putting pen to paper (literally), but it’s just a brain dump, or thinking about the day, or remembering a dream.

I need to remember the habit I’m forming is important – that’s the goal. The dedication of waking up early and writing.

I might not be writing fiction every day, but I’m writing fiction more. I still miss being in writing workshops that pushed me to finish a story, to polish it until I felt comfortable (or delightfully uncomfortable) with others reading it.

I loved how stories came to me from nowhere, and stuck with me until I got them on paper. I’m getting better at this – Judy Blume recommended keeping an idea box, so you best believe I’m keeping an idea box. Story concepts don’t stick with me like they used to, with my memory now being like a sieve, and overloaded with all of the things I need to do every day to keep me and my kid afloat. Writing down random thoughts and observances helps me stay aware of the untold stories around me and inside me. I don’t have to figure out the whole story in that moment; I can jot down an idea and come back to it later. As someone who can now barely remember things I need to do day to day without a list, this box is the perfect solution. The hardest part is finding time to come back to those ideas…

But that all got me re-thinking my morning pages… that and how Judy Blume said “Don’t think BOOK, just write a scene, then another scene…” (Yes, clearly I am still doing the MasterClass I vowed to finish in December, but hey – slow and steady wins the race?) (Is anyone racing me?) Maybe instead of trudging along with daily writing being morning pages, I need to make it scenes. Then I’m writing fiction, and hopefully working towards completing something. Win-win? It seems like a nice March goal, anyway – worth a try.

I’ve been watching High Fidelity on Hulu, trying not to binge because it’s so good, I want to make it last. I read High Fidelity in high school – maybe freshman or sophomore year? When music meant everything and a book, and book character, that understood that was like my bible. I saw the movie not long after, and loved both so much that I read and re-read my paperback, and (accidentally!) stole a VHS from Blockbuster. You take your Say Anything John Cusack – my definition of him is Rob from the record shop. (That being said, Zoe Kravitz completely kills it as the new Rob.)

As someone who narrates her daily life and breaks the fourth wall (wait, is there a fourth wall in real life?), I really enjoyed (and still enjoy) seeing that reflected in fiction and film. Watching the show now, years after last reading the book or watching the movie, I still feel “seen” and understood. I am an adult female with a black heart, but this show rewinds my memories to high school and college and helps me harness those emotions more than reading young adult fiction has done for me lately. I don’t know what that says about me, but overall it’s nice to remember I did used to feel feelings and have hopes and dreams. The show itself has taken me to a place that should help me finish a work that has been… a decade? in the making. A short story collection centered around music, one playlist in particular, and if there’s anything any version of Rob understands, it’s the perfect playlist.

So here I am, slowly watching episode after episode of High Fidelity, listening to that playlist, thinking about my words and my stories and my memories, trying to get it all down and out there so… who knows what will happen to it, but at least it will be done.

See some of my thoughts on other books to tv shows or movies:
You
Bird Box
Dead to Me and Good Girls

Last semester I taught a Creative Writing club for 3rd – 7th graders. Besides learning a lot about how to teach writing, and how to encourage creativity in young kids, I learned a lot about my own writing. About how it’s one thing to write to pursue publication, but also that it’s important to have fun. You still need to write to write, create for the sake of creating, get stories on paper to get them out of your mind, even if they’re not “literary” or “marketable”.

At the end of the semester, we created a zine. I’ve wanted to make a zine since I was enchanted by Jennifer Mathieu’s Moxie. It seemed like an engaging way for the students to share their writing, so everyone made a one page spread that we compiled into a single booklet, copied, stapled, and distributed. We wanted something to show for all the hard work of the semester, but also something that was fun.

It made me remember the zine I created after finishing a semester of poetry workshop. It wasn’t that I had pushed it out of my mind, it was just that I created a single copy on a whim, and had never done anything with it. At the time, I had already taken fiction workshops and knew the importance of feedback and revision, but the practice seemed totally different for poetry. More involved. More delicate. I was proud of the work and wanted to do something with it, instead of letting the files stagnate on my hard drive.

I think that’s important for me now, too. I wrote something, and even if it’s not published, even if it’s not submitted, I can turn it into something more, something to keep, something to acknowledge. It’s an accomplishment, just getting the words out of my head, and I like having something to show for it. If the process itself is fun for me, then that’s a bonus!

I’m re-watching Curb Your Enthusiasm because, lets be honest, I re-watch the same shows every couple of years. But also because this show is basically a MasterClass on storytelling and dialogue.

If Seinfeld was a show about nothing, then Curb Your Enthusiasm is a show that makes something out of nothing. The pants tent. The typo in the obituary. The matching jackets. Things blow up in Larry David’s world – or maybe just in his mind, before he speaks it and makes it so. Either way, it’s a great show to watch and realize that anything can turn into a story, and maybe there’s no reason to have writer’s block. Larry can turn anything into a story, roll it into a bigger deal with lies, and make it a huge drama. That’s storytelling.

I just finished Judy Blume’s MasterClass lesson on dialogue, ad as I started Curb Your Enthusiasm, I realized – talk about realistic dialogue examples! Interrupting, honesty, getting caught in a lie and having to flounder around in the moment. There might not be a big divide between Larry’s inner voice and what comes out of his mouth (as Blume tells you to consider with your characters), but that goes back to storytelling. The more he talks without a filter, the more he develops the story by digging himself into holes, burning bridges, and so on.

It’s always great to learn from media around you – it’s just one of the reasons everyone says you can’t be a writer unless you’re a reader. But getting writing encouragement from an unlikely source, something you just expected to watch to relax and revel in someone else’s drama, is a major perk.

[As in, the title should be “Allison Renner Writes a Blog … Sometimes.”]

NaNoWriMo has taken over my writing world this year, and it’s one of the best feelings ever. I’m still behind in terms of word count, but I’m catching up every day. And while I’m catching up, I feel like my story is getting stronger. I’m developing my main character more, creating predicaments and interesting scenes, and I’m really enjoying myself. I haven’t written something on this scale in years.

In fact, I’ve only written on this scale for NaNo, but I haven’t finished for many many years, mostly because of the daunting scale. Writing a novel is way different than writing a short story, and I haven’t even completed one of those satisfactorily in quite a while. I’ve been writing little blips here and there, patting myself on the back for the daily habit more so than what I was actually creating. And that’s important too, so I won’t dismiss it, but working on this big project… wow, it’s been amazing.

I’m currently at 19,118 words on a day when I should have 28,339 to finish on time. Stats tell me that at this rate I’ll finish on December 14th, and honestly, I’m ok with that. Because I know this story will make me finish. I need to get this written. But I’m not done writing today – it’s early afternoon, and I have time to write. I have days off for the Thanksgiving holiday to catch up and push through to the end. I think I’ll make it, even if I’m pretty behind right now.

But more than the satisfaction of the word count (and believe me, it is satisfying to update that word count), is knowing that I’m creating something good, something big, something I haven’t practiced in so long I wasn’t sure I knew how to do it anymore. But I do. And I am.

I’m participating in National Novel Writing Month for the 9th time since 2007. It’s interesting, scrolling back through my project history on the site, and having no recollection of a few of the WIPs. The ones I didn’t finished, incidentally, which kind of makes sense. I remember most details of 4 of the 5 novels I completed. One I remember a bit about, but don’t remember completing or what happened at the end. I guess I could read it like a book, but something about that seems unsettling. Do “real” authors read their own books? There’s so much out there that it seems like a waste to read something you created, even if you don’t really remember it.

But I digress. I feel rejuvenated about the concept of Nano this year, after successfully participating in Camp Nano during the month of July. I wrote every day, and I completed a lot of short stories, and even months later, I feel like I can accomplish anything. Mostly because the habit of daily writing is ingrained in me, even if it’s just morning pages. In addition to that task, I try to write fiction or “for fun” (aka creative nonfiction) as much as possible. Some days that is just writing down interesting thoughts or questions that come to mind that might inspire a story. Sometimes it’s funny stuff I overhear at work. Sometimes it’s ridiculous conversations I have at work (I work with children). Sometimes it’s a dream that seems so realistic I almost think it’s a memory, but there’s no way *that* could have happened.

I’m starting this round of Nano with less than a concept or outline, but something that launched my mind into overdrive regardless. When I logged in to declare my project, there was the option of giving a title. I typically type “Work In Progress”, “To Be Determined”, or “Untitled”. But this year, my computer had other plans for me. It remembered something I had typed on a random site back in the spring. Oh, don’t worry, it’s totally SFW. In fact, it’s something I typed for work. “Imaginary Friend Bingo”, a bingo card I created on a random website for the Family Book Clubs I hosted at school in April. That’s what auto-populated, and so that is what my novel will be called.

As I said, my mind is running rampant with this minor restriction. Is it a collection of short stories about imaginary friends? Is it a Toy Story rip-off about imaginary friends coming to life and having adventures? Is it a series of interviews with people asking who their imaginary friends were and what they did with said friends? (This one is especially appealing, since I work with children.) Is it a mix of all of the above, combined with research, packaged as a volume about friendship and play?

Probably not. It will probably be whatever’s been in the back of my mind that I’ve intended to write about but never found time. But! The thought is out there, and my mind is churning, and isn’t that really the point of writing, anyway?

No?

Well then.

In 2009 I made a Twitter account because… because. But as a result, I made so many wonderful friends. We tweeted every morning to the extent that it felt like we had our own morning show.

I tweeted my morning commutes from Midtown to East Shelby because there was so much to share. This was before live-tweeting was a thing, and I wasn’t live-tweeting anyway, I was posting once I got to work. People would reply “Pictures or it didn’t happen” when I described the random, only-in-Memphis things I’d see on my drive, but I never delivered. I didn’t have a camera phone. I was tweeting via the website, and eventually the technology progressed so that I could text a certain number, and whatever I texted would show up as a tweet.

That was a disaster.

But, as I said, I made so many wonderful friends. Wonderful friends to visit in other cities, wonderful friends who visited my city, wonderful friends I am still friends with to this day. But I left Twitter, for a reason I can’t remember now. It became too much, I’m sure; doesn’t it all?

I tried to join again just over a year ago, for photography, I think. Or my storytelling community. But it still seemed like too much. I couldn’t tweet and retweet and reply. I couldn’t keep up with all the demands of my online life on top of my real life.

I joined again two months ago, for professional reasons, following mostly authors, librarians, and people I know personally. And it’s almost, almost, like OG Twitter. But… better. I’m exposed to more people and more viewpoints than I was before, when I felt like my friends and I hosted a self-centered morning show.

I know most of it is the algorithm, that I’m seeing things other people liked so many times Twitter thinks I will like it, too. And Twitter is often right. Even when Twitter is wrong, I’m still seeing stories that are trending and I should know just because I’m a human in the world on social media.

But sometimes, Twitter hits it out of the park and shows me something relevant to what I’ve written about recently. Specifically, something I wrote about quickly and posted without editing or giving a second thought to, because it probably wouldn’t have been posted otherwise.

https://twitter.com/rachsyme/status/1187846149945942021

I remember reading cards on PostSecret and thinking “Yes! That is exactly what I’m feeling right now.”

I remember creating cards I never sent to PostSecret, thinking “I hope people will be able to relate to this feeling.”

Now I feel things and I keep them inside. I don’t ask other women, other parents, if they feel the same. It feels too raw to tell them, to ask them. I can’t make myself that vulnerable.

But I want to know if they relate. So I push myself to ask the deep questions of people I don’t quite know. “Do you feel alone? Do you feel smothered? Do you want to be alone?”

The questions we ask change with our stages in life. But we should still ask them, because we should still try to connect.