piano
Finding Motivation
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| Middle child at 5, proud of his piano skills, and oh, so motivated. |
- Winter doldrums: Totally real thing.*** It’s cold. I’m tired. There’s less daylight, and I’m getting less vitamin D. Winter is winter, and aren’t we supposed to hibernate or something?
- Sheer laziness: Writing is work.**** Sometimes I just don’t want to work. I want to laze about and catch up on those seasons of Sherlock I’ve missed.*^5 I’m sure you understand.
- My long-term goal is messing with my head: My overall goal is to finish. But when I think of the twenty bajillion more rounds of revisions I have to face in order to reach that goal . . . well, you can see why I just want to curl up in a ball, rock back and forth, and hum Kumbaya. It’s overwhelming!
- I have kids: Yeah, this one’s pretty self-explanatory. But it never fails . . . I’m just getting in the zone when the call of the wiley one echoes through the house: “MOM! Fee! Fi! Fo! Fum! Can. You. Come. Wipe. My. Bot. Tom.” Yep, she yells it just like that. And when I go to her, she tells me that she yelled it just like that. She’s pretty proud of that little rhyme. Gosh . . . I should use that in a picture book. 😉
So I could go on.*^6 But the point is, there are plenty of excuses we can use for why we didn’t write. We need to find that one thing that keeps us going. We need to find that one song that motivates us. That one challenge that has us begging for more writing time. Because isn’t that why we started on this road in the first place?
What is your motivation?
*It may or may not have been “Part of this World” from Little Mermaid, and I may or may not have sung this song incessantly at the time. But you’ll never know for sure. 😉
**My dad’s an amazingly accomplished musician and I don’t mind bragging on him a bit.
***This is actually the reason that I doubt my ability to live in Alaska or anywhere way up North. How do you people do it?
****This it a totally true thing, too. 😉
*^5 That would refer to every season. So you can see why I really need to catch up.
*^6 Seriously. I swear I didn’t just stare at the screen for five minutes trying to come up with a fifth theory.
Speak up:
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kids, Kumbaya, laziness, Little Mermaid, Motivation, piano, piano lessons, winter doldrums, writingTime to Let Go
After months of not playing, I recently sat down at the piano. But when I tried to play, my fingers were rusty and they stumbled over the notes. Determined to get it right, I concentrated on each finger. I focused on where it should be, its every movement—but my playing only seemed to get worse. It was not fun.
Finally, I let go.
I stopped trying to over-think each movement and let my well-practiced fingers take over. And there it was. The music I remembered. The flow of notes, the tricky rhythms, the octave jumps. It all came back.
And it felt good.
Perhaps with writing it’s the same. When we get stuck and don’t know where to go next, sometimes we try to force the issue. Perhaps we’re still in editing mode from revising the last piece. Perhaps we’re simply determined to get it right the first time. Perhaps we’re worried that we’ll never write something as good as Jane Doe who just won a boatload of awards. Whatever it is, it is NOT fun.
That is when it is time to let go. Let your practiced hand and heart take over. Remember why you ever started writing in the first place. Forget about the rules you’re supposed to be following. That can be worked out later. Forget about everyone else who would tell you you’re doing it wrong. Just let go, and that is when the magic happens. The story unfolds. The characters come alive. And writing becomes fun again.
And man does it feel good.