The Reading/Writng Connection

 The truth is this: in order to be a writer, even a good writer, you don't need the best grammar and punctuation in the world.

You just need to be better than most, in order to have a good level of "understandability"™ to your writing. Having the best grammar, spelling, and punctuation (and especially syntax) you can possibly have is definitely a good thing, but if it's not effortless for you, if you can achieve understandability, good writing is not outside your grasp.

And it's not difficult to improve immensely on your grammar, spelling, and punctuation. 

The key? Reading. As much and as often as your time and money will allow. In fact, you don't even need that much money, maybe enough to cover occasional late fees at the library. 

Figure out two or three nonfiction topics or two or three types of fiction you'd like to read, and get yourself down to the nearest library. Get a big stack of books. After awhile, you may find reading more pleasurable than watching tv.

A great resource is Open Library, since you're here on the internet, why leave now? Open Library has books that you won't find anywhere else, because a lot of their books are out of print, or have been moved off of library shelves to make room for newer books. Even though you can currently check out most books there for only about an hour at a time, it is still a great place to find something good to read for free, unless you're able to donate, which I highly recommend. You can even create reading "playlists" for yourself there, this website is a lot of fun.

The thing that makes reading so good for your writing is, the more you do it, the more you will begin to recognize what good writing (down to the deets of spelling and grammar) looks like, you'll be able to pick out a writer's individual voice, and discover your own likes and dislikes, and consequently what kind of a writer you'd like to be.

Reading is actually an extremely easy way to improve your writing. The whole time I was in school, I was an abysmally poor student, grade-wise, but because I was also a voracious reader, my best subject was English. Good spelling came naturally to me, and I was my Mother's go-to spelling expert from a young age.

Another thing that will happen when you read more: you'll be able to recognize bad writing, which is actually sort of fun. When you read a book that stinks on ice, you'll be able to say to yourself, "*I* can write better than that!" It may even motivate you to pick up a pen (or a keyboard) and fire off your own book.

If this post motivates you to read more, leave a comment and tell me some of your favorite books, or what your current read is, or some books you saw at the library or bookstore that you want to read next!

Cue the Failure Music (Wa-waah!)

 Ok, so I actually missed a day on the very second day (Go me!)

So what I propose to do about this is to spend today's 100 words on discussing what things distract me from setting up good habits.

From the outset, I should tell you a few things about me: I am somewhat disabled, due to having operations on my feet & having 2 wait for a foot to heal in order to get a hip replacement.

This has taken almost five years now, oweing to the fact that I should spend as much time off my feet as possible, but can't because I also have an elderly mom who is sick and needs my help sometimes, let alone not being able to wait on me.

Hopefully that doesn't sound like blame, because there is none to to be laid in this situation, it's simply the way things are. She needs potatoes peeled? You just peel them sitting down, is all.

Mostly, I just stay in my room, staying off my foot. Maybe once a month I leave the house to go to a doctor's appointment.

I do chair exercises to keep my circulation going, but because I can't do any true cardio, I feel there's still a little left to be desired with my daily workout.

The upshot of all this is that for the past four years or so, I've led an extremely sedentary lifestyle. And due to ADD and a couple of other cognitive issues I already have, the inactivity I live in tends to breed more inactivity. Essentially, I wake up some mornings not knowing whether to wind my watch or go blind.

I naturally try to fill that time with constructive activities, Duolingo, Udemy courses, etc. Sometimes I finish stuff I start, other times I look at the Duolingo app on my phone and see that it's making that crying/melty face.

And of course, there's always things to look at on Twitter, YouTube, or our nice tvs that we have, with all the streaming stuf you can get for free these days.

I try to take in as much educational stuff as I can, read books and my Bible every day. I also do a little crafting. I often get very excited and focused in on one thing, and all of a sudden I look at the clock and realize what time it is. And I've wasted all my time on Adam Driver Twitter, or planner videos on YouTube, or there's that episode of the Golden Bachelor I have to watch...

Anyway, like it or no, and whether it's perfect or not, this is going to be a thing I stick with, because I can't not do it. Everything else is about feeding it anyway.

AltNaNo!

 Well, I found this thing on Tumblr, and it occurred to me that if I want to get serious about blogging again I need to start doing something like this.

I've, always admired people that do NaNoWriMo every year, but I did question how people do it. I've actually been writing off and on since I was a little kid, and I couldn't write an entire novel in one month! 50, 000 words. Are some of them actually playing with the numbers? I can't fault them if they do, but it does make you wonder.

So my task this month is to write for 15 minutes a day, and to keep myself honest I will post it here every day. I have now gone past today's goal of 100 words, and now I'm just writing to fill up the 15 minutes...

...Six minutes, 45 seconds to go...what can I write at the end? I have some plans to re-establish my writing habits, let's see if this helps.

A little over five minutes...so one of my plans was to use this blog as the "sandbox" and post the cream of my writing on Substack, I have a couple of ideas about some stuff to write there. I even have plans to write a small ebook in the somewhat near future.

...Three minutes. This last bit is not as good as I'd like it to be, but at least I'm putting pen to paper...every minute that goes by, I'm at a loss for ideas...maybe I can write about having no ideas.

What can I write for one minute? Do I feel like an author now?

10 seconds...

9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1...

Stuff You Need to Be Cool in Delaware

1. A Corvette

2. Driving shades

3. A garage

The presence of item #2 entails the idea of driving *music*, which I find to be very important.

This raises the question, what DOES the president listen to when he’s driving? Does he play Credence or the Stones? Probably nothing heavier than that.

I don’t think he’s a Metallica guy, I can’t see him blasting “Master of Puppets" out his car window, but “Midnight Rambler" might be something he’d have on his playlist.

One TERF's Viewpoint

So, Dylan Mulvaney won "Woman of the Year" 

from an LGBTQ magazine, and called people like me, who actually don't really hate them, but have issues surrounding the T situation, HATEFUL.

So why does this mean anything to me? Why is it my business anyway? I'm a cis woman who isn't even a part of the Alphabet Club. Because I guess I want you to know, that, technically, I don't hate you. I want you to live your truth and find your people and be fine, like it says in the video.

The thing I hate is how you're doing it. 

If I belong to a women's collective, there's always a chance trans women will want to be a part of it, because they feel they share my experiences. Because wearing womanface is the same thing as a life experience. No one ever thinks to call this cultural appropriation, but it really is.

I'm someone who's spent most of my life trying to downplay my womanishness. When I was a child, mothers were still sewing pretty dresses for their daughters, and it was also the late sixties/ early seventies transition, so miniskirts were in, even for small little girls, apparently. So a lot of the things I wore were embarrassingly uncomfortable, and often cold. 

Because I was so barely covered sometimes, I have a couple of unpleasant memories about boys doing things they shouldn't have. As I got a little older I had more choice about what I wore, and that usually included a jacket that helped me feel more covered up, and the rest of my wardrobe was a lot less girly.

As a young woman I tried makeup, and really didn't like it. A guy at work started aggressively persuing me, and I showed up the following week with all my hair cut off. 

Stevie Nicks, one of my idols of womanhood, talked about why she wore her frilly outfits and said it kept men from treating her like an old shoe. I thought, "If you're treating someone as great as Stevie Nicks like an old shoe based on what she's wearing, something's wrong with you."

I remember experimenting with my style, and bleaching my hair into a platinum blonde shade (it took a lotta bleach) and finding out how men reacted to blondes was actually kind of scary--I used to have to take the bus home at night, and men literally acted like they were going to kill you.

From my teen years all the way up to now, I have favored a jeans & t-shirt look, with lots of added flannel and hoodie jackets. I wear leggings, but I don't do yoga, so I don't call them yoga pants.

I basically enjoy looking as un-girly as possible. I dress for comfort, but I won't accept that it makes me less womanly. I don't accept strictures about what I'm supposed to look like, except when I have to wear business attire.

What does all this have to do with trans folk? I guess what it comes down to is in my fifties now, I feel comfortable being the kind of woman I am, I don't have to follow a specific "woman" agenda.

When a man puts on a "womansuit", and *performs* "womanface" it brings womanhood to a reduction, and everything that *happens* and *gets believed* BECAUSE of that reduction is something I stand against without apology. This is not the same as promoting hatred.

The Greatest Book That's Not the Bible

 My favorite book of all time, the one that shaped who I am *before* I read the Bible and had my world turned around, is “Harriet the Spy", by Louise Fitzhugh.

You open that book up, on the first page, this girl is PLANNING A CITY. You can’t get more “grab the reader & run with them" than that.

I was introduced to this book at a very early age, in the summer school session, after first grade when we had JUST learned to read. Ms. McClain, a feminist if there ever was one, read it to us.

Something about Harriet affected me deeply, and I wanted to do everything she did. She didn’t care about dressing like everyone else, she wasn’t messing around with learning ballroom dancing, she considered her after school activities to be very serious work, and most importantly, she was very serious about writing. And I think if that 11 year old had grown up during the sixties and was still alive today, she’d most likely still be writing.

After I’d had this read to me, I found my own copy and read it voraciously. I took up the habit of keeping a notebook, just like Harriet, and tried to be very serious about my own inner life and habits.

Now that I’m a “grownup", I don’t have that same kind of steady drive to forward an agenda, I have moments that come in little spurts, like this.