Quick ROW update

I've done three days in a row of writing 5000 words a day of my new slightly erotic and comedic fairy tale novel, starring a scientific female, a sexy wizard whose magic has been crippled by a disease, and a detached talking penis belonging to a moody, philandering prince. I'm completely amazed--I didn't think it was possible for me to write this much! It doesn't even take me that long--maybe about 4 hours, split up throughout the day, and the writing coach running the class I'm taking says that by the fourth day it starts getting even easier and faster as we hit our "writer's stride." It's true, it makes the story so much easier to see as a whole when I'm working so quickly. It's actually quite marvelous, and I'm realizing that this is a good way to write.

Hooray!

ROW80 new goals for coming month

I skipped my last Wednesday ROW80 update in honor of the Internet blackout against SOPA and PIPA. I couldn't find who to contact at the US embassy to voice my opinion, so I sent e-mails to reps in California where I used to live, even though I'm no longer a resident. I figure I could speak for my parents, anyhow. It is nice to see that on occasion representatives do actually listen to what the people they're representing want. Now if some of those big Internet groups would get on board some of the other important issues it would be wonderful.

So this next month, starting today, I am doing Candace Havens' Fast Draft and Revision Hell workshop. From what I hear it's going to be an insane writing pace, so I'm going to redo goals for the next month, slimming down everything except for the writing:

• Writing goal: Keep up with workshop pace! I think it may be like 20 pages a day...by the end of 14 days we will have the first draft of a novel. I don't actually think I can do it, but I'm going to pretend that it's possible until tomorrow at least. I am taking a break from my regular WIP to write something new. Something irreverent that I started a few years ago.
• Blogging: aside from quick updates for ROW80, not unless I feel compelled
• Health: breath meditation 11 minutes a day, exercise 5 days/week
• Putting on hold the Spanish and Portuguese and reading.

On and off the wagon

I've fallen off the wagon a little with with my ROW80 goals. I said I was going to fast once a week, meditate 15 min/day, do a breath meditation daily, learn Spanish and Portuguese, and read 10 pp nonfiction. And then I had some writing goals too.

• My last attempt at a fast failed because after I recovered from my month-long yeast infection, suddenly my food choices mushroomed, and I ate too many carbs and thus created the vicious circle of wanting more and more bad foods. I lasted only 14 hours.
• I've more been meditating between 2 and 5 minutes a day.
• My nonfiction reading has slipped to 5 pages a day.
• I forgot my breath meditation two days ago so now I feel like my 40-day sadhana attempt is a bust.
• After I finished reading a book in Portuguese, I've only been reading a couple of Portuguese blog entries per day. 
• My writing...I don't even want to talk about that.

So my willpower is a little bit low these days. What happened? Well, a few days ago I started reading news of the ongoing Fukushima radiation cleanup attempts and all sorts of rumors and speculations about possible government coverups, conspiracies and what all of it may or may not mean for the future of the human race. There have been continued aftershocks around the reactors, and although the government claims they're in a state of "cold shutdown," a group of people who are watching both radiation spikes worldwide and the live webcam of Fukushima Reactor #4 continue to have about the most depressing conversation I've ever seen on the Internet.

I do tend to believe that 

1. most of the "death by radiation" talk is psyops meant to make the public afraid, as that's when it's easiest to control you.
2. If the whole business about us destroying ourselves by the end of 2012 is true, then the other stuff must be true too, that aliens won't let it happen, that we have the technology to neutralize radiation, that matter is simply a denser form of thought and the only thing causing anything at all is belief and group agreements to have certain kinds of experiences.

Still, because I am the way that I am, I did imagine out entire scenarios based on the idea that we would all die by radiation. My first urge was hedonistic--I wanted to eat lots of sugar and maybe a cappuccino, wondering why I bother eating healthy at all. And then I also felt really sad thinking that my novel didn't even have a chance. 

But then I concluded that if I ate sugar and gluten and caffeine I would feel like crap. And that there are so many other possible futures out there and in the one I'm focusing on, there is a point to writing my novel because we're going to figure out this mess. In my universe...each person who becomes a cause rather than an effect has the power to set the energy for an entire region...as big as you can make your aura. 

So the thing about making goals is it's what we can do to make the future, it's how we set personal energy as well as that for a group. And the best thing I can do is to pick myself up from where I've been triggered, and get back on the wagon.

Remembering to breathe...

One of my ROW80 goals is to do a breath meditation every day, and on my Bucket List item #50 is to do an intention-led sadhana for 40 days. I just completed 40 days of doing the Inner Conflict Resolver Reflex, a Yogi Bhajan-given breath meditation. (Directions in the link) What is said about doing this exercise:

We are often confused and held in deadlock when inner conflict blocks our ability to think and act clearly. In these moments, the mind’s prana, or energy, is scattered and distributed in a disturbed manner. This breath pattern holds the breath out three times as long as it is held in. So, the body senses a lack of prana in vital areas of functioning and asks how it can quickly and optimally reorganize itself to respond to this survival threat. The fibers of the Pranic Body extend and re-channel the prana to form a new pattern filled with clarity and action potential. Your built-in computer can calculate your total resources and the level of challenge, then design a strategy to prepare and use the mind and body effectively. This meditation resolves many conflicts and is an automatic reflex for survival. Inner conflict is the result of excess or disturbed prana. The effect is certain, gradual, and simple. Be honest with the breath timing, and the meditation will be honest with you.

What results do I notice, from doing this 11 minutes a day for 40 days?

• Physically, my breath capacity has increased, and because more oxygen comes in with each breath, I can go longer in between the exhale and the inhale as well. I notice that my diaphragm feels softer and more relaxed. 
• I blogged before about how breath affects posture and thus attitude towards/relationship with the world; I notice less feelings of invalidation and a generally more upbeat attitude--basically, I feel less triggered about issues of taking up space.
• Almost the entire 40 days, I had a horrible yeast infection that I feel was inner conflict coming to the surface regarding my relationship with my husband. In the past week I managed to separate, in my view, what I don't like about my husband vs. what I don't like about living in Brazil. They are very different. Seeing that both reduced the amount I was bothered by each, and allowed me to see ways I could solve the problems that I hadn't seen before. Basically, I realized that if I weren't so dependent on my husband because I'm living here, the stuff he does would bother me a lot less--so what I dislike is more my dependency than anything, and that's something I can work on.

Pretty good, I think...so what's the next step on this goal?

• Continue this same breath meditation once a week for 31 minutes, and then when I have the time and the will, do a 62-minute session (which will also achieve bucket list item #32)
• Tomorrow, I'll start another 40-day breath meditation: I think the Composite Polarity Mudra Meditation.

ROW80 Update - Goals are like cats

(My late Sunday check in for ROW80)

So this week, I've discovered that goals are best like cats--with a strong, solid spine and claws and teeth, but other than that--soft, super-flexible, and pleasant to have around. If the goals are too rigid, it's like a stinky cat in rigor mortis. If I don't meet them at all, it's like a cat that's been sitting in formaldehyde so long that its bones are now soft like rubber. 

I've been attempting to fill in the last few scenes of my novel WIP, which are sketched out but not written, in order to tell myself I have a finished first draft. Today I realized that what I'm writing is really boring. So I go to where my interest leads me, and that's back to the beginning, to fill in a bunch of holes and to bring enough depth to my characters that when I come to the last few chapters again, the characters can tell me what they want to do and how it's going to end instead of me simply trying to fill it in for chronology's sake. When I'm revising, the word counting is different, so I am adjusting that goal to one (or so) chapter revisions per day.

One of the great things about making goals is the instilling of self-discipline, but I'm thinking now that it's good to also build in some rewards into the goals, otherwise you have goals that are like those really annoying cats that meow incessantly, or they have fleas so you don't want to touch them. One of my ROW goals is to fast once a week, and that's simply formalizing something I've been more or less doing for the last month--but I thought that perhaps I would give myself a carb binge half-day once every two weeks. I just completed a month of eating extremely low carb to get rid of a yeast infection, and now that it's finally gone, I deliriously ate some gluten-free pancakes--and finally got rid of this carb craving that's been hounding me for days. 

And since writing has been on my to do list for every single day all the past year, I'm wondering what would happen if, in my goals, I put aside a day a month when I'm not allowed to write a word? Something to "cleanse the palate" like fasting or like carb binging. I'm not sure I dare try it.

Paulo Coelho's O Alquimista

I just completed reading Paulo Coelho's The Alchemist in Portuguese, which means I can check off an item on my bucket list--#60, Read a book in Portuguese.

I skimmed some of the reviews of this book on Amazon and Goodreads, and it seems the average is 4 stars. I think that's what I'd give it. Those who rate it lower say the writing is simplistic, the characters not deep, and the language is annoying.

I think the simplistic writing is one of the reasons why I enjoyed the book, as it's my first foray into Brazilian literature and I appreciate not having to constantly stop and look up words in the dictionary. I think the annoying language is only because of the translation; it seemed quite nice in Portuguese. As it's a fable, I felt no need for the characters to be deep, even though normally I might find it bothersome that all the characters have the exact same intuitions about life and thus there is a way out of every conflict if you just follow your heart (not realistic).

One thing I didn't like was how the woman who Santiago, the protagonist, falls in love with, keeps telling him that because she's a woman of the desert, her nature is to wait for her man to return, so she wants him to go follow his dream instead of staying with her. I really didn't like that part because I HATE waiting for my husband when I have no idea when he's coming back. I guess that means I'm not by nature a woman of the desert. Honestly though I don't think there is any woman who's content to do that; they've just been conditioned that way probably by observing their mothers being beaten by their fathers if they complained about the wait.

Some parts of the book were inspiring, and the ending was fun. A good first book to read in Portuguese.

ROW80 Wednesday Check-In

I've managed to meet all my ROW80 goals for the last two days! It has helped being accountable to the group--otherwise I doubt I'd have written more than a couple hundred words per day on my WIP.

I have noticed two things:

• I'm doing only the bare minimum I set in my goals. If I want to write more words, I need to set a higher minimum. The problem with goals may be that they reduce spontaneous production in favor of mechanical meeting of a line. (Although this is mostly a theoretical complaint as I did just say I would have written much less without my ROW80 goals).
• I may have overstretched myself by putting too many other non-writing related goals in my list. So what happens is I tend to do all those things first, and then the WIP gets shoved to the end of the day. I don't really know what to do about that since I really do want to do all those other things I listed...I might have to make a goals to ONLY work on WIP every other day, and the other things added the second day. 

I suspect this check-in post is really boring, sorry about that. I think it's good to write boring posts sometimes so I feel less pressure in general to try to be interesting. Overall that should help with my being myself more, right? My brain is kind of fried because we spent all day out, driving to visit my in-laws.