Writing today!
When you change religion, your entire cultural underpinnings shift. Your values, your habits, your physical culture, everything will begin to reflect the new in ways that may seem frightening or incomprehensible to others.
There's the short snippet that started my writing today. Instead of doing Morning Pages longhand as per The Artist's Way, my hands hurt too much when I got up to write in my big blank book. So I decided arbitrarily to do a thousand words of journal in RoughDraft instead. The advantage of "Morning Pages" is thinking about self and writing and creativity daily. I liked its being specifically three pages so that I wouldn't go off into twelve hours of journaling -- but on pain days, twelve hours of journaling may do me more good than just beating myself because I had a pain day. And doing it right in the same computer that I do my writing let that happen.
I got into the flow and when I checked the wordcount, I was at 1,100 words or thereabouts when I wrote that paragraph... and I used it as a starting point for the Introduction for Reculturing. It was pretty much a theme statement for the book, and I finished up the description of what the book's about and how to use it.
Then I launched into a topic for Chapter 1 that is pretty basic -- Good and Evil. No matter how gut-satisfying it is to watch a movie or read an epic fantasy novel where good guys have to pull themselves together to stand against a Great Evil, reality is usually more of a set of habits and constantly facing petty evils rather than the invasion of someone like Sauron. So I went into the differences between a punishment-for-sin view of life and a karmic rewards view of life.
I rambled between the spiritual and the scientific a few times too. I may have to make reason and common sense another chapter topic, because part of my expectations of philosophy and ethics is that they should make sense. kkitten42 has pointed out that's personal, because a lot of otherwise good religions aren't supposed to make sense but present koans and contradiction that can be contemplated till common sense emerges. Mystery religions are like that. I don't like mystery religion as a concept, but that may really be personal choice.
It's interesting. I think writing this book will demand some personal growth, and that's a good thing. I've put off doing it for a long time, and I have some ideas that aren't as widespread as others. But I'll share them and finish off each chapter with a checklist of questions readers ask themselves and decide for themselves. Where I think my idea or opinion is personal, I take responsibility for it as such.
My arthritis is still going off. I might draw or something later on, but if I spend the rest of the day just playing Diablo, it doesn't matter. I accomplished something big with my writing, and it's the weekend. I do not have to stick to the discipline of "write first and write before drawing, try to do both every day" on the weekends. I deliberately let those be unscheduled time because I might actually function better without scheduling, just by arranging priorities. But right now that "write and draw every weekday" plan did at least kick me into writing and not just resting and drawing.
I missed it. I missed the process of writing. I know too that this won't be a two chapter day because I have the tiredness of accomplishment. That five thousand words is as much energy as I have right now for writing, it's done and I feel good about it. But my knee is very bad and I do need to just rest too, recharge and be ready to write again tomorrow whether it's more of the book or doing a cool eHow How To Draw article with an ACEO resulting.
There's the short snippet that started my writing today. Instead of doing Morning Pages longhand as per The Artist's Way, my hands hurt too much when I got up to write in my big blank book. So I decided arbitrarily to do a thousand words of journal in RoughDraft instead. The advantage of "Morning Pages" is thinking about self and writing and creativity daily. I liked its being specifically three pages so that I wouldn't go off into twelve hours of journaling -- but on pain days, twelve hours of journaling may do me more good than just beating myself because I had a pain day. And doing it right in the same computer that I do my writing let that happen.
I got into the flow and when I checked the wordcount, I was at 1,100 words or thereabouts when I wrote that paragraph... and I used it as a starting point for the Introduction for Reculturing. It was pretty much a theme statement for the book, and I finished up the description of what the book's about and how to use it.
Then I launched into a topic for Chapter 1 that is pretty basic -- Good and Evil. No matter how gut-satisfying it is to watch a movie or read an epic fantasy novel where good guys have to pull themselves together to stand against a Great Evil, reality is usually more of a set of habits and constantly facing petty evils rather than the invasion of someone like Sauron. So I went into the differences between a punishment-for-sin view of life and a karmic rewards view of life.
I rambled between the spiritual and the scientific a few times too. I may have to make reason and common sense another chapter topic, because part of my expectations of philosophy and ethics is that they should make sense. kkitten42 has pointed out that's personal, because a lot of otherwise good religions aren't supposed to make sense but present koans and contradiction that can be contemplated till common sense emerges. Mystery religions are like that. I don't like mystery religion as a concept, but that may really be personal choice.
It's interesting. I think writing this book will demand some personal growth, and that's a good thing. I've put off doing it for a long time, and I have some ideas that aren't as widespread as others. But I'll share them and finish off each chapter with a checklist of questions readers ask themselves and decide for themselves. Where I think my idea or opinion is personal, I take responsibility for it as such.
My arthritis is still going off. I might draw or something later on, but if I spend the rest of the day just playing Diablo, it doesn't matter. I accomplished something big with my writing, and it's the weekend. I do not have to stick to the discipline of "write first and write before drawing, try to do both every day" on the weekends. I deliberately let those be unscheduled time because I might actually function better without scheduling, just by arranging priorities. But right now that "write and draw every weekday" plan did at least kick me into writing and not just resting and drawing.
I missed it. I missed the process of writing. I know too that this won't be a two chapter day because I have the tiredness of accomplishment. That five thousand words is as much energy as I have right now for writing, it's done and I feel good about it. But my knee is very bad and I do need to just rest too, recharge and be ready to write again tomorrow whether it's more of the book or doing a cool eHow How To Draw article with an ACEO resulting.