Words and Pictures and Stories, Oh My!
Good Habits & Nice Things
Look, I categorically do not believe in new year’s resolutions but I do think it’s worth making an effort to repeat the things that make you feel good. Or nice. Or otherwise enrich your tired little soul.
Call them habits if you wish. But I’m not so bothered about doing them religiously or beating myself up if I let them fall away.
Anywho, I have found myself casually doing some totally-not-new-years-resolutions the past month-and-a-bit and have found them to be… nice.
First, an old ‘habit’ that I recently rekindled and now make use of as a daily(ish) tracking tool, journaling receptacle and generalisted writing area:
750words
So, I used to use this tool A LOT and it’s been around A WHILE. I have entries there going back to 2015(!) or so. But quite honestly I’d forgotten just how useful it is. Especially if you spend most of your day with a bunch of tabs open.
What is it? A very simple, very convenient online word processor. It saves your work, gives you a nifty lil ‘ rundown of your literary mood, and throws confetti at you if you write 750 words or more.
How do you use it? However the heck you like. Lately I’ve been mostly using it as a sort of daily brain-dump area — somewhere to track my daily activities, reminders, thoughts, to-do list and random ideas. But I also use it for journaling, outlining new scenes or story ideas, or speedrunning a chunk of fiction (there’s something kinda gamified about trying to get to 750 words… I imagine it would be VERY useful during NaNoWriMo, too).
It’s one of those tabs I perpetually have open on my desktop, but rather than being a distraction, it manages to make my day better whenever I click on it.
Nice. Good. Yes. Next?
One Second Everyday
I’m generally quite stubbornly against anything that you’re supposed to do everyday (except, like, brushing your teeth), because I inevitably fail at it and then resent the pressure of trying to reliably fit yet another THING into my day, but this one’s a little bit different. Because when the ‘thing’ is actually fun and intriguing and encourages you to be curious and observant and artful, you want to find a moment for it.
And this really does only take a moment.
What is it? An app that collates 1-second videos every day to create a collage of your daily observations. You could do it for a week or month or a year, whatever — but it’s a really fascinating way to consider how you perceive the world. What moments and fragments are important to you? What you notice? What do you find beautiful or interesting? (Yes, most of my videos are of my dog.)
How do you use it? Take a video. Or a picture. Every day. Or not every day. You can steal stuff from earlier in your camera roll. Who’s gonna check? The content police? It’s more about curating all the tiny moments of your day/week/month/year. I tend not to take many photos or videos in general (or the ones I take are of utterly weird shit that would never make it into a photo album) so this has encouraged me to document more of my daily life. My kids. My husband. Myself. (Of course, the dog.) Nature. Things that make me laugh. Little moments of comfort or homeliness. Food. The changing seasons.
At the risk of getting all mindful on you, it makes you stop and look. And sometimes you see things that might have passed you by.
From a writing perspective, I’m finding it useful as a reminder to take note of the details. Innocuous things that could be described in interesting ways. The layers of imagery that go into building a literary picture.
It’s not a new app by any means — I have friends who’ve got years of footage on theirs — but it’s the first time I’ve used it, so it counts as a nice new good thing/habit to me.
Public Domain Works 2024
Thing three is simultaneously new and old. Fresh and familiar. Ready for a new lease of life or shameless (and legal) adaptation.
What is it? The latest round of creative works released into the public domain as of January 2024. There are some complicated rules around it all, but essentially it means their copyright has expired and they’re fair game for rewriting, reworking, adapting, bastardising, and doing prety much whatever you want with them.
How do you use it? Check the full list of 2024 public domain works here and dive the fuck in. The work of Pablo Picasso, Dylan Thomas, Hank Williams and J. R. R. TOLKEIN. Lady Chatterly’s Lover, All Quiet on the Western Front, Orlando, The House at Pooh Corner, and perhaps most contentiously, Walt Disney’s Steamboat Willie — the first appearance of Mickey and Minnie Mouse.
So if you’re in need of some inspiration and feel like bringing an old classic back with a unique spin, then go to town, buddy. It’s free real estate/free domain.
An Editing Q&A
This last one is more of a hypothetical future nice thing, perhaps. An invitation to ask me a question about writing or editing, with the hypothetical assumption I might have something helpful to answer with.
I hope I will. I will certainly try. And if the answer is worth sharing, I will post it up here as part of a monthly post series, along with questions from my editing clients and writing buddies. Because, as it turns out, many of us struggle with the same things — knowing if an idea is any good or not; developing our writing skills; being objective about our work; digging our way out of a self-pitying writer’s pit; recognising our own strengths and writerly foibles; deciding what to cut and what to keep and how to tell the difference…
So if you have a writing-related question you’d like to share, please do — either by messaging me or by posting it as a comment below.
Ok. More nice things soon. ‘Til then, go form a good habit or two.