Deborah Makarios – Page 183

August 14, 2015

How to Beat Procrastination II

Motivation!
Yes, I know I said that habit was the secret to beating procrastination, and it is. But you’ve got to get that habit started.

As Jim Ryun put it, “motivation is what gets you started. Habit is what keeps you going.” You need motivation just to get you out of bed in the morning.

Motivation is something I struggle with, especially when it comes to getting out of bed in the morning. It’s an issue I had been mulling over for some time when I read Revision and Self-Editing for Publication by James Scott Bell, in which he suggests that writers should have a mission statement which they keep someplace visible in order to inspire them.

What exactly this mission statement should contain, however, was left a little vague: “hopes and dreams” were mentioned. So I looked into what others have said about mission statements. The common strands seemed to be about who you are, what you do, who for, why, and where you’re going with it.

Richard Branson says “If you are in a situation where you must write a mission statement, I think you should try for something closer to a heraldic motto than a speech. They were often simple because they had to fit across the bottom of a coat of arms, and they were long-lasting because they reflected a group’s deeper values.”

That seemed like a good definition: a simple motto which reflects your deeper values.

So I started by answering all the questions-starting-with-W that I could. I freely admit I struggled with the ones asking me what the future held, because I am not psychic and I really have no idea. My life to date has not accustomed me to assume that next year will be in any way like this year. (It often is, but it always comes as a surprise.)

In the end, it boiled down to these words: truth. hope. take heart.

There are some writers who hold that happy endings are lies, and that it is morally irresponsible to suggest otherwise. I disagree. I believe that good will ultimately overcome evil. That truth gives me hope; and to withhold that hope from others would be both morally irresponsible and utterly selfish.

If all this seems a bit too metaphysical to you, consider it this way: my aim is to write works (novels, plays, what have you) that are like a cup of tea. Sitting down for a cup of tea is both a rest, and a restoration; it eases your weariness and it prepares you to face the world again.

I want to write works which people will read and re-read; not necessarily because of what the story says, but because it gives them the courage to keep going, and change things.

Truth → hope → take heart.

I will of course put this somewhere I’ll see it often – but there’s no harm in having a cup of tea on my desk to remind me as well.

August 12, 2015

What Makes You Go?

If you were a golem, what would the words in your head say?

August 7, 2015

Interchangeable Knitting Needles: A Thing of Beauty and a Joy Forever

You know how it is. You get to hear of something, you maybe see one somewhere, and then you see the price-tag and it gets firmly shelved under F for Fantasy. But you keep thinking about it. You keep looking at the options, and one day you realize you could actually make it happen. The idea frightens you a bit, but you keep thinking about it, and then one day you actually take the plunge and buy it.

And then, in my case, you sit back and wait for it to arrive, and wait, and wait, because they’re out of stock (although it doesn’t mention this on the website) and then there are manufacturing problems, and then you have to wait for them to be shipped from the manufacturer to the merchant, and then to you (all three of you being in separate continents).

The treasure for which I was so eagerly waiting was a set of interchangeable circular knitting needles, the apogee of knitting needle technology. First there were straight needles, then double-pointed needles or DPNs, then fixed circular needles, and now, at last, the inexorable march of progress brings us the interchangeable circular knitting needle. (Once we have accumulated sufficent spondulicks.)

The set I got is known as the Karnation set, despite this name not being mentioned on either the merchant’s website (eknittingneedles.com) or the packaging. It’s not the usual way of marketing a product, but then, they apparently keep selling out, so they must be doing something right.

This set has 13 colour-coded sizes of aluminium needle (2.75mm up to 10mm) with five different lengths of cord (16in to 4ft). That is the equivalent of sixty-five different interchangeable needles, even if you don’t take into account the possibility of linking two or three of the cords together to create a needle so long you can skip with it. Or knit a blanket in one piece. Although maybe not both at the same time.

Two cord-connectors are included with the set, along with a rubber pad and a couple of little key-wires so you can tighten the connections to the point where you can’t undo them by hand (nor, more to the point, by knitting with them). There are also a packet of end-caps (to hold stitches on a cord while you are using the needles with another cord) and a card which tells you which of the colour-coded needles is which size. This all comes in a surprisingly small black zippered case (about 18 x 20 cm, closed). It looks something like this:

On the downside, the shortest cord (16 inches with needles attached) is so short you can barely get the needles’ points to meet. On the plus side, it’s still useful as a stitch-holder, or an extension to one of the larger cords.

The only thing I don’t like about this set is that the smallest needle is 2.75mm, which, while not huge (and smaller than a lot of sets go), is still larger than I use for a number of things, most notably socks. And this is where the delay came in handy: as compensation for waiting so long, the merchant offered me a 20% discount, which I took up in sets of double-pointed sock needles (three, the smallest of which is 2mm).

Of course, once I had this equivalent-of-sixty-five-circulars set, I had a lot of old needles I no longer needed, so ‘sorting out the knitting needles’ became an important item on the July purging list.

In July I purged:
nine circular needles (of various lengths and widths)
three pairs of straight needles (ditto)
and nineteen books, including poetry, prose, and reference.

This may seem like a short list, but to a bibliophile, purging books is a slow and arduous task. I’m lucky I have my knitting to help me stand the strain.