My Writing Process

There's a nice little community of Foreign Service bloggers, and I've been following several blogs and bloggers for a few years now. It's an online community, of course, but I've had the chance to meet a few of these ladies in person. One of them is Bfiles-- who has a real name, of course. (And it's not Bfiles, though that would be kind of cool.) We met in real life earlier this year while we were both in DC. She was studying Mandarin for her upcoming move to China, and I had just moved FROM China. This in and of itself doesn't qualify one as "speaking Chinese," but since it was my major in college, I do actually speak a bit. So we got together and talked China for a while. 

And now she has tagged me in a Writing Process blog-hop. And since I'll pretty much jump at any opportunity to talk about myself, I said I'd be happy to join in. I'm not going to tell you when I was supposed to have posted this, but we'll pretend it was today and not sometime last week. Okay? Great!

What am I working on?

When I moved to Brasilia in January, I was working on absolutely nothing. I even went back and reread (i.e., read for the first time) The Scarlet Letter, because I had nothing to do. I'd brought a cross-stitch project to finish, but I finished it my second day here. It was a long six weeks with no internet.

But now I'm working on several things:

1) Building small people. 

Did I mention that I had a baby boy a few months ago? He's 2 1/2 months and learning how to laugh and kick. This does make nursing kind of challenging. He's relaxed, chill, and generally so much like his father that I absolutely adore him! I couldn't have asked for an easier baby.

My older two girls are going to day camp at the embassy this summer. They won't go every week because I miss having them here, but they're gone today and having a blast. 

2) Playing the violin

This is new. It has been over a year since I've played the piano, and I miss it terribly. We're realizing, though, that a grand piano doesn't fit in UAB, so I'm going to be going without it a lot in the future (between posts, etc). I used to play the viola, but for various reasons, I decided I'd like to learn how to play the violin. I thought about it, but never seriously. Then last week someone was selling their violins before moving back to the US. I jumped on it, and now I have two violins and no excuse not to fill our home with beautiful music. Except that it wakes the baby. And "beautiful music" isn't quite what I'm playing yet. I'll get there, though.

3) Learning Portuguese

My biggest dose of Portuguese comes every week at Church. I sometimes study our Relief Society manual a week in advance. And I have a goal to read the Book of Mormon in Portuguese before the end of the year. But my serious study has dropped significantly, see item 1.

4) Other creative projects

I have a bunch of sewing projects that are in various stages of completion. For a while I was kind of bummed I never had time for them. But considering that I just created an entire person, and he has never eaten ANYTHING except what I physically created for him, I think I'm doing just fine in the "creative" arena. 

5) Harry Potter

It got to the point where (dorky as this sounds), I missed Hogwarts. The last time I read the books was when I was nursing Penny, and that was in 2009. I don't think I'll reread the series annually, but every 5 years or so sounds great. Next time it will probably be with my kids. How fun!! 

How does my work differ from others in its genre?

Well, first of all, I prefer to call it my Opus. And my Opus has significantly fewer pictures than many others. This is because my google account has a stifling limit on how many pictures one can upload. I've been blogging on here since 2006, and my account has since filled up. I could pay money to expand my limit, but I haven't because I am cheap. I could go through and upload significantly smaller versions of a bunch of my photos, but that would take time and I'm lazy busy. So sometimes I upload the pictures onto facebook and then just use the urls and link to my pictures. But I'm busy, as I said, so I usually just upload pictures onto facebook and then write on my blog. 

Otherwise, it's pretty much your typical narcissistic blog. 

Why do I write what I write?

Because I like to talk about myself. I have never had a more captive audience than my blog, and for that, dear blog, I thank you. 

I just like to blog about what happens in my life. I don't aspire to chronicle every happening in my life, but I do enjoy writing about things that happen.

How does my writing process work?

First of all, what I don't do: I don't do catch-up posts. The point of my blog is not to cover everything interesting that happens. I try instead to write something interesting about whatever happened recently.

I once kept a diary of a family road trip. It went something like this:

This morning we ate breakfast at Burger King in Rio Rancho. Then we drove through Albuquerque. Then we ate hot dogs at a gas station in Gallup for lunch. Now we're somewhere in Arizona.

And that was it for the day.

I didn't write much-- because that's boring to write-- and I almost died from the pain of trying to read it. No one cares where we ate for breakfast!

Instead of chronicling everything that happens, I try to write about the experience: what happened, why, how I felt about it, and what people had to say. Dialogue makes it interesting-- and it breaks up long paragraphs that I generally skip when I read things.

I also don't edit very often. But when I do, I realize that I ramble a bit and start too many sentences with "so." It would be a good thing for me to start doing, but I usually have something that needs doing. So there goes the editing.

Passing the torch

I've asked the lovely Kate, from Pulling Stakes, to write about her writing process. I did have to offer my first-born son in exchange, but I think it will be worth it. Plus, I should get him back. (Right? Maybe? Please?)

Kate lives in Brasilia-- like me! So I thought it appropriate to pass the torch to someone that I happen to know is a lot taller in real life than online.