A Week in Review: It's a bug's life (Part I)

Question: What does a ukulele, boudoir-themed shower crafting, and an alien-bug have in common?

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For a while now, I've been getting bugged about posting. (You know who you are, Graham.) ;)

In all honesty, I appreciate the inquiries because it forces me to think and rethink how I will manage to carve out writing time in my life. It's tricky, and it's getting trickier. The music side of my life has taken over. Just in private lessons alone, I have gone from 2 to 10 students in the course of the past six months, which is very exciting, but time-consuming. This doesn't even include all my own practice hours and symphony rehearsals and youth symphony rehearsals and master classes. But we won't go into that.

As if I didn't have enough music in my life, at the beginning of the summer I finally picked up the ukulele I bought on our honeymoon trip to Maui five years ago, dusted it off and figured out how to tune it. Then, I proceeded to teach myself how to play it, passably well, in an hour (very proud of myself for that). I took it camping that same weekend and pestered my family with it. And when I returned, I thought to myself, I should document this.

About that same time, I was working very diligently on my good friend's boudoir shower invitations and, feeling very proud of my crafts, thought that I should also share that endeavor.

That's when I starting thinking about doing a "week in review" blog wherein every week I write about something that occurred in my life that I find interesting, challenging, fun, boring, witty, snide, laughable, culpable...really...anything goes (within reason).

In my mind, as I lay in my bed at night trying to sleep, I'd draft these excellent blogs with witty comments and visual stimulants of my superb ukulele playing and crafty crafts. And by morning, I'd forgotten my wit and realized (especially this summer) that I had no time for dilly-dallying around on my blog.

Or did I?

Why did I have this new-found exploration into previously dormant (redundant, I know), facets of my creative life (i.e. ukulele playing, extensive craft-time)? And why, more importantly, was I feeling a need to share these things? The ever-sought-after social need for approval? I'm sure there's some part of me that nods in agreement to that. But, I honestly think it's more my need to write. And since I'm having a hard time editing novels at the moment, my mind is finding other avenues for me to hone my writerly instincts: 

a) I have a perpetual need to be creative. If I'm not playing my instrument or writing, I'm trying to find other avenues to express creativity. Hence the other activities.

b) When engaging in these other creative activities, I still feel that urge to write. The little blog birdie in my ear that whispers, "Write about this" is just encouraging me to find a different way to keep writing. Because the number one thing us writers need to remember (and always remind ourselves) is to just keep writing.

I love to write. And when I am not working on my novels, I get this built-up anxious feeling. My characters start to have lives of their own in my head. They answer my novel questions, but never at good times for me to sit down and capture them. 

While my novels are my first priority in my writing life, I need to be writing even when I'm not noveling (or not making the time to novel). So after a long, exhausting summer (full of very fun and exciting events), I am collecting myself once again. I am preparing for noveling by accepting that earlier this summer I was onto something with my other creative expressions and desire to write about them. I will be, like I dreamed up, making a valiant effort to do a blog entry each week: A Week in Review.

As I embark on this journey, I am hoping it will lead me down my noveling-path more easily. One can hope!

Here we go!

See: A Week in Review: It's a bug's life (Part II)