IWSG: Wednesday, September 7, 2016: What Helps Me Find Time to Write.

It's the first Wednesday 
of the month ~ 
the day when members of the
Insecure Writer's Support Group
share their writing struggles
and offer their encouragement
and support to other members.

To visit the IWSG website, click here.

To become a member of the IWSG, click here.

Our wonderful co-hosts who are stepping up to help IWSG founder Alex J. Cavanaugh are:
C. Lee McKenzie , Rachel Pattison, Elizabeth Seckman, Stephanie Faris, Lori L. MacLaughlin, and Elsie Amata.


I hope you have a chance to visit them and thank them for co-hosting.
I'm sure they would appreciate an encouraging comment!
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Happy IWSG Day to everyone making the rounds!
I'm home now ~ for another week.
I'm planning to accomplish more writing
this fall in Victoria than I managed last year.

Next Stop:  Beautiful Victoria

British Columbia, Canada

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

Do you like the new feature for IWSG Day? 

I certainly do!

It's fun to respond to questions about writing;
but what I truly enjoy is reading
the inspiring answers of other IWSG members.

I'm hoping to get some galvanizing ideas,
because I struggle with the topic of September's question:

How do you find the time to write in your busy day?

I work in spurts fueled by pressure.

I've never been able to settle into a schedule.

I've been writing a memoir, and it's proven

to be much more difficult than I'd imagined.

What keeps me moving forward with my memoir

is my Friday Northern blog post.

Were it not for my blog, I'd have given up long ago.

Lots of Hot Coffee Helps Too!

Aurora, Colorado, USA

© M. Louise (MacBeath) Barbour/Fundy Blue

All Rights Reserved

When I started writing several years ago,

I had no idea how to proceed.

I had piles of letters, photographs, and maps  

and a morass of memories that I had skirted for decades.

Things that happened during my time in the North

changed how I felt and behaved in the years that came after.

Some things affected me profoundly,

and some things I did as a result haunted me.

The only way I could wade into the emotional muskeg 

confronting me was with tiny steps, a blog post here, a blog post there.

Sometimes I'd attempt a series, 

like my inner gingerbread man posts,

thinking I could handle it, but I couldn't.

I'd drop it abruptly with no explanation.

I was clueless about blogging,

and the most unexpected thing happened.

Bloggers reached out and supported me.

I was shocked.  

I had no idea such a thing could happen.

So slowly I began writing what I could look at,

following my father's letters chronologically,

and floundering through the cold, wet muskeg.

Northern Muskeg

Flickr:  Rover-Thor   License

I'm not all the way there yet.

I may be the slowest memoir writer ever,

but I'm making progress,

I may actually get it done!

If it weren't for the amazing people I've met through

blogging and the Insecure Writer's Support Group,

I wouldn't be writing at all.

I would have given up in despair.

The pressure of getting that next Northern post out

locks me into a weekly writing schedule

that keeps me moving forward almost every day.

I'm more binger than scheduled, but I am writing.

It's not finding time, more squeezed by a deadline.

Through this process, 

I can't believe how much I've learned about writing,

and how much better I understand my life.

I've become kinder to that younger me.

I can look at her and perhaps understand her.

Not all of this is connected with the North, of course,  

but it's my experiences in the North that sent me spiraling.

Gotta go!  Gotta binge on Friday's post!  LOL

Happy writing, Everyone! 

My Family and I Exploring This Summer

Cape Split, Bay of Fundy, Nova Scotia, Canada

Photo by Barbara MacBeath

© All Rights Reserved