Turkish Tuesdays, Arts/Media and Public Policy, and how Time Banks can help!

When I lived in Izmir, a Turkish TV spot shocked me: it showed an image of an elderly Black man, evidently homeless, sleeping in a stairwell directly beneath a sign that pointed up the stairs and read “White House” followed by the caption “Yorum Yok” or “No Comment.” This was about the same time that a major Turkish newspaper criticized the Erdoğan government over the death by hypothermia of an elderly homeless man up in Istanbul, sparking outrage among my Turkish coworkers. These two media pieces, taken together, led me to wonder about the links between the media and public policy.

When I was a kid, PBS School House Rock spots taught me things like the Preamble to the US Constitution, and how bills become law.  These and other PBS shows like Sesame Street demonstrated the concept of cooperation and taught a generation of kids ideas of fairness, social justice, and may have helped pave the way for later laws passed once we became adults on issues ranging from birth control and same-sex marriage to the Affordable Care Act.

In like manner, shows like El Ministerio del Tiempo, in Spain, provide social commentary and critique, while framing various often opposing views on social justice, cooperation, and the policy elements that can encourage those values. Similarly, the Turkish family show Sihirli Annem also showed a generation of kids in Turkey respect for women, social justice and cooperation. That generation is now part of the push-back against radicalism in Turkey today.

All of these shows are examples of how the Arts and Media can influence Public Policy, and vice-versa. Time Banks, when encouraged by local government and community-based organizations, can help in facilitating access to the arts through Open Access Cable, local arts organizations, and extending Time Bank credit to local artists through mural projects and other local culture projects, for the benefit of both local and extended communities.

Join or start one in your community now!

Read, Write, Dream, Walk !
ShiraDest

orig. posted: October 18th, 12017 HE

Mindful Mondays, Einstein, and NVC via libraries

Libraries are a vital part of any democracy, and of Phase I of the Four Freedoms movement.  I got a book, which I did not write down more than my thoughts, unfortunately, in France I think, from a library, and noted on teaching that:

–

Interesting, that Einstein grew up around clock parts and railway renewal, in Bern. So he drew from his personal context, clocks and trains, to illustrate his theories. Almost a form of NVC, putting mathematical or scientific concepts into a form that your students can readily imagine in their own lives, thus can use, from their own perspectives Cool!

–

Action Items in support of NVC :

1.) Share your thoughts on NVC, please.

2.) Write a book, blog post or tweet that uses NVC concepts, tells a good story, and makes a difference. I’m working on that through my historical fantasy #WiP, #WhoByFireIWill. Once published, if a book, please consider donating to your local public library.

Dear Readers, ideas on learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning, on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write -one can add Stayed on Freedom’s Call via this GR button:

, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

 

Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

ShiraDest

December, 2020 CE = 12020 HE

(The previous lesson plan since this post, and the most recent lesson plan…)

Shira Destinie Jones by ShiraDest is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.

Great Greek Wednesdays, emotional, mental, physical, and spiritual self-care, and Health Care For All

I think most will agree that most of us do not take proper care to care for ourselves on each of the four levels that I can think of: emotionally, mentally or intellectually, physically and spiritually. But that makes me stop and think: what on earth or in heaven above exactly is spiritual health? Come to think of it, What is spirituality, and why do I care? Four reasons:

—

–

A woman came up to me, after a Zembekiko at a Greek festival in the Boston area, and asked me
‘What do you feel when you dance?’ -I had to ask her what she meant; she explained that I seemed to be in another world, as if I were having a spiritual experience, when I danced.
Upon reflection, I had to admit that she was right -the beautiful music of the Mediterranean, the Balkans, even of those wild places where men danced with swords in hand, or like Zorba, gone mad with grief -those mournful yet insistent strains pulled me into some place where life existed. A place, maybe the only place, where I felt alive.

For me, spirituality seems to be that thing that gives meaning to life, a reason to keep going day after day, eating, breathing. Why bother? Because there is beauty in this world, and each person has a particular way of looking at it -a distinctive way of seeing the world.

For me, writing makes me understand and remember how it felt to be alive, throwing myself into the air, reaching into the clouds, stretching into the breeze. When the words overwhelm me, refusing to leave me alone, writing them down is the only escape.
But then, they demand to be pondered.
The emotional work always follows the meaning -is it possible to be happy, and why does that matter? Action matters. But thoughts and feelings affect actions.

So I use four criteria to order my days:

1. An action that gives meaning to my life: either dance or write each day,
2. A thought that adds to my emotional stability each day, either comprehending my reasons for feeling/behaving a certain way, or meditation on some feeling and the causes behind that feeling, leading to a decision on how to classify and use that feeling in the future.
3. A physical action that furthers my goals for reaching my body’s fullest potential (running a marathon, for example), and
4. An action that furthers my goals for developing my fullest personal intellectual potential (reading a certain number of pages in Turkish, for example).

For me, these four things represent my personal responsibility to reach my fullest potential as a human being, spiritually (if that exists), emotionally, physically and intellectually. Now, I wonder if and how I can help others do the same?
Shira “Holocene/Human Era” Destinie
20 August, 12015 HE
BretagneCurrent Location: A world that should be safe for ALL
Current Music: Imagine -John Lennon
20.8.12015 èH )

–

Yassas,   γεια σας!    

Action Items in support of health care and hope that you can take right now:

1.) Reflect, please, upon your definition of ‘spirituality’.

2.) Share it with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your thoughts on how  we can translate those thoughts into good for all of us,

4.) Write a blog post or tweet that uses those thoughts, tells a good story, and makes a difference. I’m working on that through my historical fantasy #WiP, #WhoByFireIWill.   Please share with us.

Dear Readers, any additional ideas toward learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning as part of on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write

, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

ShiraDest

NaNoWriMo 2020 CE

November, 2020 CE = 12020 HE

(The previous lesson plan since this post, and the most recent lesson plan…)

Since my definition is already above, here is my first idea for translating it into good for us all:

One way may be a study of Childrens Right’s as Human Rights in Popular Culture:

1. Astérix en Hispanie (le quatorzième album de la série)
et Astérix : Le Domaine des dieux
2. Sihirli Annem (esp. ep. 45 or 46?)
3. Harry Potter

With focus = ways that these shows empower kids to collaborate in preventing the abuse of others, and showing/understanding how this aid affects future adults ?

Moody Mondays and Adulting ed.: applying creative logic to old reflexes to prevent new mistakes

Part of ongoing self-education, not hair-splittingly legal or finance related, but part of the responsibility for Adult continuing self-education, nonetheless, is that of self-reflection (is this continuing adult education, or self-health care, or both?):

—

–

Linked to solutions for the questions raised in an earlier post on Solving Childhood Abuse Problems via Sharing a Story, I think that understanding present-day problems in light of childhood abuse  needs to be accompanied by a strict sense of what specific problems were caused by on-going feelings (shame, self-doubt, self-hatred, etc) and how those feelings, from childhood events, lead us to make poor choices now.

I suddenly understand what my principal tried to tell me when I started teaching math 
-she criticized me, saying that power is not bad, since I could not control my students.  I
 had difficulty with this, and ended up being fired since I'd lost control of 3 of my 5 classes. 
 Now I understand -I hate imposing my will on others because I had no choice as a child, and I 
cannot stand to be like 'that.'  Too bad I did not understand this in 2001.



(response:)
Little by little, you will find these old reflexes, analyse them, and put them in the right 
place so that they no longer keep you from moving forward.

Tools every adult needs to have or develop…
25.6.12015 HE

and wrt Martial Arts training: For me, Martial Arts was useful, but as a child who was sexually abused, I was taught not to say No -therefore for me, MA was about learning my responsibility to assert and defend myself. For a male friend, OTOH, MA was about beating the crap out of another big guy just to prove that he could because he enjoyed it. So for him, IMHO, under those specific circumstances, no, MA was not a healthy way to express his emotions at that time. 

–

 

So, it turns out that feedback from calm, non-harsh and non-judgemental but problem-solving oriented outside perspectives are essential to productively processing traumatic events from childhood.  And so, in appropriate cases and with the appropriate style and surrounding cautions (like the idea that an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of cure, so don’t go walking at night without either a safe friend or several weapons you know how to use!!), is Martial Arts trainining. 

Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

Action Items in support of Adulting that you can take right now:

1.) Search for two different types of Martial Arts for women and small children that can help prevent various kinds of abuse.

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your thoughts on why you think these particular styles are useful,

4.) Write a blog post or tweet that uses a specific martial art to prevent an abuse, tells a good story, and makes a difference. I’m working on that through my historical fantasy #WiP, #WhoByFireIWill. Once published, donate one or more copies to your local public library, as I intend to do.

(Did I mention Universal Health Care with childhood trauma training, and Martial Arts??)

Dear Readers, any additional ideas toward learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning as part of on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write

, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

 

ShiraDest

NaNoWriMo 2020 CE

November, 2020 CE = 12020 HE

(The previous lesson plan since this post, and the most recent lesson plan…)

My Comment:

1.) The o goshi throw, the major over the hip throw, was something I learned in Chinese Kung Fu, which is useful for small and flexible women who can use our speed and agility against a larger and over-confident opponent. The style I learned was called Tian Chen Pai, mostly Southern mixed with a bit of HapKiDo and northern WuBuChin, as our Shifu was quite eclectic. Being the smallest student by far in adult classes, I was always the demonstration student, and thus developed a habit of always having my Ukemi in practice during those years.

Moody Mondays and Adulting ed. via my Theoretical Framework for Shared Monetary Governance

If we stretch the mandate of ongoing free legal and financial education (now aka Adulting Ed.) for all as part of Phase I of the Four Freedoms Movement, then academic work in this area is useful, right?

My first article on Shared Monetary Governance (SMG) based on my MPhil/PhD thesis. Shira “Holocene Era” Dest, published in 2010 (12010 HE):

Shared Monetary Governance builds a framework for community level governance of money and fills part of the gap in the literature of monetary governance. The approach begins with consistent treatment by national regulatory frameworks vis-à-vis both national and non- national currency institutions. Regulatory framework tolerance is measured by equating more participatory processes with higher degrees of shared governance. The second part of Shared Monetary Governance explores internal monetary institutional governance. Consistent regulatory framework treatment, transparency, accountability and participation are then applied to all stakeholders affected by monetary functionality. This juxtaposition of governance vs. scale requires investigation of the processes used to make decisions in monetary institutions. Since no such dual-paradigmatic investigation has been undertaken, this paper asserts that metrics for such an investigation need to be developed.  …

Which I then did, with the rest of my thesis, garnering the dubious praise, which I do appreciate nonetheless, of “a valiant effort” in the literature of governance, due to problems with the methodology (hence my MPhil, award, rather than a PhD).

Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

Action Items in support of Continuing and “Adulting” Education that you can take right now:

1.) Imagine how having a say in the way our money is issued might motivate you to learn more about the banking and finance system,

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your thoughts on how you might go about learning more about the global economic system, and the finance system that is part of it.

4.) Write a blog post or tweet that uses that idea, tells a good story, and makes a difference. I’m working on that through my historical fantasy #WiP, #WhoByFireIWill. Once published, donate one or more copies to your local public library, as I intend to do.

Dear Readers, any additional ideas toward learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning as part of on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write

, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

ShiraDest

NaNoWriMo 2020 CE

November, 2020 CE = 12020 HE

(The previous lesson plan since this post, and the most recent lesson plan…)

Turkish Tuesday and (mental) Health Care

I was very surprised, when I lived in Izmir (aka Smyrna), to see how supportive Turkish women are of one another, even in cases that I found very surprising.

—

A coworker of ours, a young woman, was apparently rather heavily in debt, as she came crying into the office I shared with two colleagues, one originally from Istanbul, the other originally from Bulgaria, but of Turkish origin.  Both of them turned to our younger colleague, jumped out of their chairs, and ran to hug and comfort the woman, as I tried to understand what was happening, and whether a doctor was needed.  They explained that they had both heard earlier about her troubles, and that it was just something that needed talking out, and led her into a nearby empty classroom to sit down.

Within minutes, a dozen of our colleagues, all women, all lecturers of English, had pulled the chairs into a horse-shoe shape, with this young woman at the head of the U, tissue boxes at the ready, listening and commiserating with her as she cried and explained her problem of having too many credit card bills.  I excused myself to go to the ladies room, astounded, at the time (2005).  Now, in 2020, I look back and realize that this was essentially a cultural stand-in for mental health services.   Untrained, and not trauma-related, of course.  But it is something, still, a support system, which many people lack, especially in the United States.  Especially those who struggle with childhood traumas or PTSD.

Ten years later, looking back on that, I found myself pondering social isolation and mental health from a different perspective.  I found an article related to overcoming PTSD via new neural pathway creation, and wrote:

Bloody hell -so that’s how it works!!

”

While she doesn’t do any brain mapping herself, Chard says this altered biology makes sense based on the fact that, as children, we are only just beginning to conceptualize the world by organizing experiences into categories. She gives this analogy, which she uses with her clients: “You see a two-year-old run up to a dog and say, ‘Doggy!’ And then she sees a cat, and she doesn’t have a schema for cat yet, so she says ‘Doggy!’ Mom says ‘Kitty,’ but everything four legs and furry is doggy until the child develops more categories.

“And then I look at my clients and say, ‘Where’s the category for child abuse?’ When you’re five, there isn’t one. The brain doesn’t have a place to store that kind of event, so it ends up bouncing around—not stored well at all in terms of a past, processed event. So what we do in therapy is bring it up, process it, make neurotransmitter connections, make sense of it with a new schema, and put it away.”

”

from: http://www.research.uky.edu/odyssey/spring03/puttingaway.html

Ok; now I see why it is important to re-call the experiences rather than either try to forget, or plan B.  Thank nature that the brain is sufficiently flexible (I was diagnosed in 1994 with PTSD and still criticised by a partner in 2013 for looking around all the time and jumping when a bus went by, but I thought I was being discreet -at least I no longer have major panic attacks…)

ShiraDest

March, 12015 HE

So, it turns out that social support can help, but with pre-verbal age traumas, talking can also help. So, yes, talking does help.  Interesting…

Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

Action Items in support of literacy and hope that you can take right now:

1.) Search for two different representatives you can write to about local health care services.

2.) Ask your reps how to increase mental health care services in your area.

3.) Share  with us in the comments, here, please.

Dear Readers, any additional ideas toward learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning as part of on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write

, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

 

ShiraDest

NaNoWriMo 2020 CE

November, 2020 CE = 12020 HE

(The previous lesson plan since this post, and the most recent lesson plan…)

Moody Mondays, calendar reform, and Adulting ed

Calendars, culture, and taking responsibility for our own continued learning as adults in a modern democracy (well, republic, actually), are all part of Adulting Education. Understanding how our calendar shapes our ways of thinking is a first step, hopefully, toward accepting the use of the Holocene Calendar as one more tool in our toolbox of empathy-building tools.

—

In my review of a book on Cherokee Women’s Voices, I commented that the change in the calendar, from the traditional East Coast native American way of seeing time, to the Gregorian Calendar, played a large role in cementing the ‘civilization’ plan to Europeanize Native Americans:

–

Voices of Cherokee Women is a well-written chronicle, from pre-contact to modern times, of how Cherokee women went from respected voices in the community to silence, and back again. Telling many stories again from another perspective (particularly Mooney and Lt. Timberlake, whose accounts look different when viewed through the lense of women’s history), this book shows another side of the story. Our story.

Acceptance of the Gregorian system of time-measurement, which came with more quickly produced (manufactured) goods, led to rejection of a more feminine calendar, and thus eventually to acceptance of European religion (at the point of trader debt and guns, admittedly), loss of the Tsalagi language in favor of English, and a forced acceptance of the ‘Civilizing’ program: an attempt to replace the Cherokee way of thinking, respect for mothers and honored women, with the domestication of obedient ladies: a European way of thinking.

These essays show more than just how Cherokee women went from equality to inequality and back again. They show how the imposition of calendar, religion, language and ‘civilization’ led to the loss of a more open and flexible way of thinking.

Peace,

originally posted on : Wednesday, 24 September 2014

–

But I wonder whether all the work those in the Calendar Reform movement do will really lead to the cultural change, and hence the world change, that we want to see?  An inclusive calendar could, hopefully, make people think more open-mindedly, or at least think in terms of Humanity rather than just the Christianity of 2014 AD, or Judaism’s 5773, or Islam’s 1400 years? But are we calendar reformers too optimistic? How do we all come to think of ourselves as just human beings, rather than Black, White, Jewish, Christian, Muslim, American, Russian, Ukranian, etc?

In Service to Community Cooperation, and Fraternity,

ShiraDest

Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

Action Items in support of literacy and hope that you can take right now:

1.) Search for two different sources discussing how our calendar frames our way of thinking.

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

Dear Readers, any additional ideas toward learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning as part of on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write

, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

ShiraDest

NaNoWriMo 2020 CE

November, 2020 CE = 12020 HE

(The previous lesson plan since this post, and the most recent lesson plan…)

Sacred Study Saturdays and government as a New American might see it

As a US citizen who has sworn to uphold and defend the Constitution not once but twice, and given that all naturalized US citizens also swear this oath, for me, the Founding Documents (the Declaration of Independence, and the Constitution of the United States of America) are the sacred documents of the United States government, and for US citizens: secular, yes, but sacred, still, because it is the one set of documents, promises from generation to generation, that each of us has sworn to defend at all costs.

Thus, the study of democracy and how to improve our democratic processes, is sacred study, for me.

So, I thought this idea of sortition might be interesting (sortition is the lottery-based ‘election’ used in ancient Athens…), given that it is being taken more and more seriously lately (at least by the younger generation):

The Youth Parliament of Belgium proposes sortition-based government

---

The Youth Parliament of Belgium is a yearly conference of French-speaking youth in Belgium which is organized by the Parliament of the French Community in Belgium. Every year the Youth Parliament discusses four decrees that are proposed by four “ministers”. The Parliament decides whether to adopt or reject each of the decrees.

The 2013 Youth Parliament adopted a decree titled “Décret visant à réformer l’exercice du pouvoir des citoyens, de leurs assemblées et de leur gouvernement” (“Decree to reform the exercise of power of citizens, their assemblies and their government”), which, if I understand correctly, was authored by Pierre-Yves Ryckaert, a political activist.

Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

Action Items in support of literacy and hope that you can take right now:

1.) Search for two different sources explaining the idea of Sortition (aka Demarchy).

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your thoughts on how you like each of the sources you found,  perhaps as an update on your GoodReads reading,

4.) Write a blog post or tweet that discusses Sortition, or that just tells a good story, and makes a difference. I’m working on that through my historical fantasy #WiP, #WhoByFireIWill. Once published, donate one or more copies to your local public library, as I intend to do.

Dear Readers, any additional ideas toward learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning as part of on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!!!, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans) !

ShiraDest

October, 12020 HE

(The previous lesson plan since this post, and the next lesson plan…)

Moody Mondays, and Early Childhood Education as Health Care for the Entire World

This early childhood ed. org. in DC has been, and is still, doing what Joseph Biden proposes to do on a larger scale in the US, which ought to have been done a long time ago, in THIS galaxy:

They needed cribs back in 2012, but now you can donate online:

–

I had the opportunity, thanks to Alice Burton, to be able to meet last night with some wonderful people working with vulnerable infants and todlers in DC. The group is called Jubilee Jumpstart: http://www.jubileejumpstart.org/

–

 

So, it turns out that the health of us all depends even more heavily on the health of these littlest of human beings, friends, and please help remind all of our fellow human beings, that an ounce of prevention (via early education) is worth a pound of cure (in later health, prison, and lost productivity/creativity, etc.).

Yassas,   γεια σας!    Salût !  Nos vemos!  Görüşürüz!     ! שָׁלוֹם

Action Items in support of literacy and hope that you can take right now:

1.) Search for two different sources of information on the impact of early childhood education on later adulthood health issues (physical and mental).

2.) Share them with us in the comments, here, please.

3.) Share your thoughts on how you found each of the sources,

4.) Share this or another post on the relationship between childhood healthcare and education to later outcomes, and let us know where to find the post here in these comments, please.

Dear Readers, any additional ideas toward learning, especially multiple #LanguageLearning as part of on-going education and empathy-building, to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness,  #EndMoneyBail & achieve freedom for All HumanKind? 

Support our key #PublicDomainInfrastructure  & #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19:
1. #PublicLibraries,
2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,
3. #UniversalHealthCare, and
4. good #publictransport
Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!, Teach and Learn (Lesson Plans)!

ShiraDest

Preptober for NaNoWriMo 2020 CE

October, 2020 CE = 12020 HE

 

Stayed on Freedom’s Call: Cooperation Between Jewish And African-American Communities In Washington, DC

Moody Monday: What I learned from my last NaNoWriMo about Writing

I’m still finding notes from earlier story and novel projects, and think it is a good idea to review lessons learned from drafting and editing my previous two practice novels, before I start drafting my next WiP, which I think (or hope) that I’m nearly finished planning.

My second practice novel, started on Wattpad,  was easier to track the deadline on the NaNoWriMo2015 website before I set up my own spreadsheet.  It taught me several things about managing Depression (actually PTSD -> anger->depression…).

First: Making a deadline feels good, even if it is Just/Only YOUR deadline. You DID it.
Second: Physical activity every day, like running  or dance, etc, is, at least for me, imperative (and also read, and have a sun lamp, if you live farther from the equator than the 35th parallel…).
Third: Making a deadline a second time, better than you did the first time, proves you can repeat the feat, thus showing discipline and perseverance. This helped me feel like less of a waste of oxygen while I can looked for a way to use that to help other folks.
Fourth,  the actual writing lessons:
Writing 1.) When writing your first/second/fifth practice novel, be sure to have a physical workout routine, preferably involving boxing gloves, AND several people to talk to about all of the crap your writing will drag out of you.  (Remember NOT to use the gloves on the people…)

Writing 2.) For me, at least, plan the ending first…
Writing 3.) Plan setting, time and weather for each scene, not just the plot!!
Writing 4.) Outline by scene, not by # of words (I outlined by 300wds, which ended up driving me nuts toward the end…)
Writing 5.) Do not write a chapter per file, it is a formatting nightmare to insert 18 files (one for each chapter) into one ‘book’ file on an exhausted day 28!
Writing 6.) Lay out the chapter plan on one large calendar in the same notebook (if at all possible) as the planning notebook (and resist the temptation to plan each chapter on small scraps of paper!! You cannot believe the number of scraps I now have floating around…).
Writing 7.) Start on day one, and don’t punish yourself for not planning ahead. A planner is not a pantser, and I, a planner, felt annoyed trying to write stream-of-consciousness just because I had 2000 words to finish That Day.

Better, I learned, to take the day to plan out the next two scenes and write them the next day, at least for me.

I found that when I knew the time of day and year and weather as well as what the MC was supposed to do in the next couple of scenes, I could just imagine the flow and zap, 2000 words came out of no where (I did NOT say 2000 Good Words, but that is for the next 3 or 4 re-writes!!!).

and

Writing 8.) Set a new notebook aside for the 30-Day 50k challenge, because it will turn into at least a year, and probably 80k words. Before it goes back down to 60k again.

In Solidarity with All Kind People,
Peace via Cooperation and Non-Cooperation,

modified from original 2015 post,

some Action Items in support of literacy and writing that you can take right now:

1.) Download some advice on novel writing, maybe from two different websites,

2.) Read about NaNoWriMo,

3.) Share your thoughts on the value of each person writing a book, perhaps as an update on your GoodReads reading,

4.) Write a novel that references a classic book, tells a good story, and makes a difference. I’m working on that through my historical fantasy #WiP, #WhoByFireIWill. Once published, donate one or more copies to your local public library, as I intend to do.

Other ideas welcome on how to #EndPoverty, #EndHomelessness, & #EndMoneyBail, starting with improving these four parts of our good #PublicDomainInfrastructure:

1. #libraries,

2. #ProBono legal aid and Education,

3. #UniversalHealthCare, and

4. good #publictransport

Read, Write, Ranked Choice Voting and Housing for ALL!!!!, Walk !

#PublicDomainInfrastructure #StopSmoking for CCOVID-19

ShiraDest

 September 2020, High Holidays of 5781, 12020 HE