Deception of trajectory + halfway! 🎉
Hi, friends!
I hope this newsletter finds you well. Our February has been up and down, which is what I have learned to expect of this month in general. It’s a time to hold plans lightly because weather and illness and general gray doldrums can all conspire against fun and productivity. But there are precious moments too: snowshoeing in the mountains, the first of the blooming bulbs in our yard, the beginning of regrowth on our over-wintered kale …
If you scroll to the end of this newsletter, you’ll find a fun winter cabbage guide. Otherwise, I have some musings but very little news this February. Unlike in most recent months, I have no new projects being launched into the world. In fact, I’ve intentionally paused working on new projects, because I’m in the middle of writing a BOOK. Did you know that books have a lot of words in them, which can take a long time to write? I am learning this first-hand right now.
I am also learning in a visceral way all the observations I’ve heard from other authors before, including the importance of the little tricks to get writing: setting easy word count goals, leaving something unfinished at the end of one session so you have a starting point for the next one, going on a walk or taking a shower to get ideas flowing, just go open the computer, etc. I have been using all of these and more!
I’ve also been observing my own inner voice with interest. My inner voice isn’t always helpful to me, and I’ve had to do a lot of work in the last two years to keep writing and drawing in spite of what I might be hearing from that voice. It usually likes to judge things before they’re done, which is super unhelpful. I know this about my inner voice, and I’ve learned to tell it that I’m just going to keep going anyway, thank-you-very-much.
But recently I’ve noticed that my inner voice also likes to look for trajectories in what I’m working on. Which doesn’t at first seem harmful, but I’m realizing that it’s an inaccurate way to assess progress.
For example, for the last year I’ve been taking violin lessons alongside my 10-year daughter. Why? Because I love music and love the instrument and happened to own a serviceable violin. I’m moving at child student pace and it’s been fun and humbling. The violin is a challenging instrument — way harder to make sound decent than the other instruments I mess around with (piano, guitar, recorder). And my inner voice has been LOUD at times when I humbly practice. I have to just keeping playing, in spite of the screeches and out-of-tune notes. There is no other way to get better. I know this.
But my inner voice will do this annoying thing that still seems to discourage me: If I pick up the violin, my inner voice wants to watch for whether I’m sounding “better” than last time I practiced. It wants to find a trajectory — up or down — and assign it to my playing, and then judge whether I’ll ever have any success based on that line drawn from my last practice session and this one.
The problem is, growth doesn’t work like that. While I can obviously see huge improvement over my playing today compared to last year (when I didn’t even know how to hold or use a bow), I can’t expect to see “improvement” every time I play! And yet I still need to show up and practice all the same, even if I sound “worse” today than I did yesterday. (And honestly, that’s how I often feel!)
Bringing this back to The Book, similar stuff happens with my writing sessions. Sometimes I sit down and the text flows easily. But sometimes, it really just doesn’t. And even though I’ve been writing for decades, this is still my first book, and my inner voice is ready to pounce and declare me UNFIT TO WRITE ACTUAL BOOKS! — just because one (or two or three) writing sessions in a row feel hard. My inner voice draws a line, makes a curve, between those sessions and points out that it makes a downward slope.
Except that, again, writing doesn’t work like that either. Three hard writing sessions in a row isn’t a trajectory — it’s just three hard writing sessions. But, gosh darn it, it can still be hard to work up the enthusiasm for the fourth writing session after that. Especially with my inner voice trying to draw these silly lines and point out trajectories that are irrelevant in the scope of writing an entire book. Just as two or three squeaky violin practices are irrelevant (and actually unavoidable) in the scope of learning an instrument.
Those observations aside, writing the book is actually going really well (in spite of several challenging writing sessions while I was sick earlier in February). As of this weekend, I am exactly halfway through the initial very rough drafting process in terms of word count and chapters drafted. That does not mean I’m halfway through all the work, of course! The revision process will be big! ENORMOUS! But I find initial drafts of any writing project always feel like some of the hardest work. I really have to gird up my loins and give myself pep talks and do All The Writer Tricks to discipline myself to Sit And Write. Because it’s legit hard to make something out of nothing! Everyone who does that in any capacity (whether writing, drawing, cooking, farming, quilting, drafting policy, coding, or whatever), please stop and pat yourself on the back. I just patted myself too.
With lots of work still ahead of me and an inner voice chattering away, I’m still going to enjoy that pat on my back and celebrate progress. Also, I am loving connecting with farmers all over the country (and world!) to talk about farming and parenting. Every conversation I have is inspiring and makes me eager to get to the warmer part of the year so that our family can get back out there and get planting too! But February is a good enough time to be inside on zoom chatting with other farmers and then typing away as I digest it all for future readers. I am grateful for this slower season for giving me the time to do all of this good (and sometimes hard) work.
How about you? What are you learning or making in this quiet late-winter season?
With gratitude for all of it,
Katie
Meet winter cabbage
Enjoy this seasonal veggie guide! I’ve been making these as often as I have time to share with my Instagram following. I also hope to have time to turn them into a bigger project sometime in the next year. So even though I’m not technically working on new projects, I’m still messing around and dreaming about What-Comes-After-This-Current-Book!
