A Learning Process

I'm doing a lot of reading a writing lately/ Mostly it's due to M3 blog and discussions. I want to keep my mind sharp, but lately I've been questioning its effectiveness. I feel like I've been here before. Back in my early twenties I bought hundreds of books on writing and scanned them into my computer. I read them, but I didn't retain much of what I read. I want to take a moment to see what I can do differently.



Taking Notes

I wish I had taken notes. I'm starting to read a book on freewriting and talking about writing and help the mind get more organized. All the time I was reading those books I was never taking notes. A lot of time I would even zone out and just let the words flow over me. I see now that it's not just enough to listen, but I have to engage the words and take action.

Continuous effort

Another thing I noticed was that in the past I had a tendency to give up. I would get very intense in my efforts, trying to do too much too fast and then giving u because it was overwhelming. Now I see the value in incremental change. I learned this from The Power of Habit. Small changes can snowball into large habits. So I want to read books using the scanner, but I don't want to loose the information in a haze of words. This probably means I have to slow down. The way I read the text now forces me to slow down after every few pages anyway, so I do see the value in that.

Following your bliss

I hate the co-opting the term bliss, but I believe int his whole heartily now. If it doesn't keep me rapt then I'm going to lose focus. I was focused on writing a novel, but my true love wasn't novel writing. It still may not be. I feel like blogging is where my heart is right now. Social networking aspect of the blog is what's different. I'm not doing it on my own anymore. And while I can see myself writing a novel, it's not something I want to do alone.