Covid came to town. Not just my town. Yours, too. Our province stopped contract tracing, limited testing, and told everyone, if you’ve got ANYTHING, stay home.
It’s winter in Canada, so totally doable.
Everything is closed anyway. Including schools. crowd groan
We have online learning for my little kindergarten student here in the household. I marvel at the tech learning happening for these 4 year olds. We didn’t even get a VCR until I was in high school. With a child at home, everything closed, winter on the doorstep and nowhere to go, one might think we are going stir crazy.
There are moments.
Sometimes I look over my living room and kitchen and think, “Haven’t seen ANYTHING ELSE but THIS.” I slump a little. And it takes a little longer to pull my chin up.
Chin up… life skill.
Being able to see gifts, pivot, and calm down in all this is a challenge, especially when there are so many messes to clean up. For many of us (especially women), it’s not the tragedies that destroy us, it’s the messes. How many counters have we wiped? How many things have we picked up?
The mind can be a scattered mess. Our bodies are healing from this and that, but how long will it take our brains to get back on track? I’ve sat down to write a blog post a dozen times and forgot why I sat down the moment I turned on the computer.
I can’t even remember my New Year’s resolutions.
And I’m kind of the poster child for New Year’s resolutions working out. Keen observers will notice that all three of my Paris books start in January.
Then these glorious gifts showed up:
1. For book writers: Danielle Steele typing on her typewriter
(Clicking the image will take you to Instagram.) She has written her books with a 1946 Olympia manual typewriter, which she named Ollie.
“I paid $20 for it a million years ago, at the beginning of my career, in a second hand typewriter store. And I love it.”
As I navigate writing with a typewriter, I’m learning that writers who use typewriters spend their time staring at keyboards while writers of the computer age stare at the screen. Looking just at the keyboard seems to keep one thought stringing along. Words you wrote five words ago are in the past. You only concentrate on the moment. It’s almost like a meditation. Try it with your computer keyboard. You write differently.
With a typewriter, you might not TYPE better, but you might WRITE better.
2. With Joan Didion hightailing it to glory recently, I’ve been reading up on her writing process. (the link takes you to an article so littered with ads its ridiculous.)
She said she doesn’t write novels or screenplays or articles. She writes sentences. Don’t think about the whole thing, just write one sentence, then another, then another.
I suppose that could be the New Year’s resolution. It’s easier to do when you stare at the keyboard and don’t let yourself get distracted by incessant content.
Speaking of content…
3. My new Etsy shop filled with notebooks.
During this time of online school, when I have to be within earshot of the other computer to MUTE and UNMUTE and “Look for things that start with the letter L,” etc… I created another Etsy shop full of notebooks. It was once where I housed digital printables, but someone tried to sell the digital printables and I had to throw down a world of hate so… no more printables. People who copy your stuff are just pickpockets. LOATHE. evil eyes
Rant over. Here are more pretty notebooks:
In Pantone’s Veri Peri purple colour of the year for 2022, aimed to “encourage personal inventiveness and creativity.” Sure. That’s about right.
Admittedly, this CONTENT notebook includes a bit of a giggle laced with bitterness since all writers these days are being asked to be “content providers.” Ugh. Why don’t you just take ALL the romance out of it? But if you read it differently, you can remember to calm the heck down whenever you pick up your notebook. CONtent or conTENT. Win win.
Plus flower, lemons and typewriters because… FUN.
The idea for the notebooks sprouted as part of a New Year’s thought process.
What if I had all the money, time, energy already to do whatever I want to do?
Which is another version of this harsher reality:
What if I’m stuck at home with a pandemic, small child, shift work husband, and winter?
I’d have a stationery shop full of pretty paper supplies. To list an item on Etsy, you pay about 25 cents (depending on your country) so you don’t even need much to get that dream happening.
I also updated the usual Etsy shop where I house all my Paris Letters, Typewriter Letters, and art. I reduced the price of letters so I could fold them rather than send them flat. This means you save on shipping, but more importantly, I can pop them in the mailbox in front of my house rather than trek out to the post office every other day risking the lives of me who is recovering from surgery (nothing to be alarmed by, TG!), but especially for my child who is too young for a vaccine. Win win.
Plus, my car has three snowstorms worth of ice layered on it, so… there’s that. We even lost electricity during one storm, but fear not… manual typewriter steps up to the helm. YES.
Typewriter Letters are heading out every week. Writing sentences. One sentence, then another, then another. Just like Joan.
PS If you have a writerly New Year’s resolution like to write a book, organize your journals, or get better at writing, check out my online writing courses.