My 40-day Yoga Challenge - 2 days to go

Photo courtesy of istolethetv

Why would I, after practicing yoga 4 - 7 times/week for two years, suddenly decide to do a 40-day yoga challenge? I already practice a lot of yoga, right?

Well, a yoga retreat on Galiano Island is the final draw prize. That's one reason I decided to do the challenge. I feel a little guilty that I only chose to participate this time because I want to win the retreat. Although I never win in draws. So maybe I shouldn't feel so guilty, since I recognize that I have a miniscule chance of winning. In fact, I know I won't win. But gosh darn it, I plan to at least be entered in the draw.

Reason two - I was curious as to whether a 7-day-a-week practice would be different from the 5-6 days/week I've recently been doing. Already I appreciate yoga immensely and can't imagine ever not practicing. In fact, I plan on taking the Semperviva yoga teacher training program next year. But what would a daily practice teach me?

Days 1 - 30: To be honest, the first thirty days were easy. My biggest challenge was trying to fit in two classes on the weekend instead of my usual one.


Day 31: I got sick. Sore throat, sneezing, sniffling, dizzy spells. Awesome. I was in denial the first couple days. When I started being unable to sleep because my throat hurt when I lay down, I decided to accept the facts. Now I had a decision to make, and this is where the 40-day challenge came in to play.

I could quit. I was sick. Yoga is about understanding your body and taking care of it. It would be perfectly acceptable to take a few days break and allow my body the time to heal. That's what my advice to anyone else would be.

I didn't quit. (bad yogini!)I used the challenge as a way to force myself to consider how my daily practice can heal, by adapting my yoga practice to my body's condition. And this for me, is the ultimate beauty of yoga. It's not a sport. It's nurturing, accepting and non-competitive. And the best teachers recognize that.

Case in point, on the day I felt the worst (dizzy spells and snot streams, hurrah!), I went to Dan's class. I went in the evening, when I was not dizzy and not so sneezy and snotty. I planned to meditate while the class was doing asanas. Although I'd seen people doing their own thing in other classes, I'd never done it myself and I felt a little nervous. To my relief, Dan's intro to the class included the invitation "And if you just want to sit still and meditate for the whole class, that's fine too." It was as though he could feel what I needed to hear and he said the words just for me. So I did meditate for most of the class, not stressing my body in any way but healing it through breath and a tiny bit of movement at the end of class.

The following day, I did the same thing. After class the teacher came up to me afterwards just to check that I was alright. Such a sweet man! This is Semperviva yoga studio, this is yoga, this is the yoga community - compassionate, nurturing, challenging.

How does this relate to writing? If we see writing as a practice, then the connection is clear. If your body's needs change day-to-day, then your mind's needs do as well. And while I agree that getting your bum in the chair every day is the first step to writing, accepting that your output may be different from yesterday or last week and not beating yourself up about it, is just as important. We will make progress if we do what we can every day. And the only way we are going to WANT to practice every day is if we feel gratitude for what we do, no matter how much, and if we accept daily change and work with it.

A daily practice that inspires, challenges and nurtures us is valuable, no matter what it is. The Semperviva 40-day yoga challenge has motivated me to stick with a daily yoga practice and has made me feel good about myself and what I can accomplish.

Day 38: Feelin' groovy!

What is your daily practice and what does it do for you?

April 21 update: I completed the challenge! Yay! Didn't win the retreat but I am so glad I did it - I feel fantastic. Day 41, 42, 43, 44 . . . coming up!

yWriter, free and fabulous novel writing software

Shortly after starting on the second draft of my novel, I realized I didn't want to use a word processor any longer. I needed to keep track of my characters and move scenes around. I wanted to be able to rid my novel of specific content yet keep that content accessible. My word processor made this far too time-consuming.

yWriter has been my savior. A versatile yet easy-to-use software that is free and allows me to focus on writing, not scrolling.

Simon Haynes, an Australian computer programmer and author of a science fiction comedy series called Hal Spacejock, created yWriter as a tool for his own projects. He is always updating the software and is quick to respond if there are any problems.

My five favourite features:

1. Drag and drop scenes: If you decide that Skippy the magic bunny needs to die in Chapter 1 instead of Chapter 5, simply drag the scene from Chapter 1 to Chapter 5. Done.
2. Lists: Characters, locations and items. Record names, pictures, bios, goals and update them any time. Add characters to scenes and create reports to see how many scenes each character is in.
3. Export scenes, chapters or the whole project to different formats: Export to html, RTF, text, eBook, etc. Makes it easy to copy a scene into a Word doc if necessary or create a PDF.
4. Create outlines and synopses: Each scene has a space for the writer to input a scene title and another space for a scene description. yWriter allows you to export just these to a document so you have a ready-made outline or synopsis.
5. Details and Goals Tabs: Although I don't use theses tab as much as I should, they do assist you with tracking important structural elements of your scene. For example, the type of scene (action or reaction), if it's plot or subplot, the day the scene occurs and how long it lasts. The Goals tab provides a space to input the scene's goal, conflict and resolution.

yWriter saves your writing frequently and if you pair it with a free online backup system like Dropbox, you can access your project from any computer and never have to worry about losing a ton of data if your machine crashes.

If you already have a few thousand words written in a word processor, you can easily import your work-in-progress into yWriter.

For the new writer who wants to keep their novel organized without spending a pile of cash, yWriter is the perfect tool.

Download yWriter here and git yer writin' organized!

The Pony Wish

Picture by Gato Azul

Anyone who has sent or is about to send their project or product out into the world has experienced the pony wish. The term pony wish comes from this blog post by entrepreneur advisor, Bernt Patak. This excerpt explains what I feel are the key points of the pony wish problem:

"You know the story...you bust your butt for weeks or months grinding out your minimal viable product, dealing with endless technical issues, raising money and keeping the lights on, finding, managing and motivating a kick-ass team and so on. Then suddenly the big day arrives and you launch your baby into the world. But eventually the beer and wine glasses are empty, you go back to your shared desks and realize that that moment of elation is gone and a bit of an unpleasant reality sets in...this is the start of the hard work, not the end! Four weeks later the hill you're climbing seems as steep as ever. What happened? 

You didn't get your pony wish, that's what happened. We all have them, especially if it's our first start-up. Like the little kid who wishes for a pony and doesn't see it under the Christmas tree, you secretly, immodestly, expected that your killer product would be the next Dropbox or Kik or whoever and just take off out of the starting gate, passing a million users at the end of the first month."

Don't we all have a secret hope that our book will be the pony under the tree? I sure do! We work very hard on our novels or screenplays and we want to believe that once it's out in the world, readers will love it and buy it and the money and acclaim will flow in.

That situation is extremely rare.

But what we don't appreciate, because we're so disappointed about the pony, are the riding lessons. Yes, there's more work to go into promoting and fine-tuning the masterpiece but we also get to interact with readers, agents, editors and other writers as well as learn about a whole new aspect of publishing.

The start-up analogy is even more apt for writers in these days of digital publishing. If we get feedback about a problem with the novel we can easily change it just by editing a document then uploading the new version of our masterpiece. Easy for us and makes readers happy with a quick response time.

I'm very interested in this idea of authors as entrepreneurs and running their book-writing-and-publishing business as a lean start-up. In future blogs I plan to investigate the topic in more detail.

To be honest, sometimes I feel I have been working on the novel for so long that I just want to get it out the door. Then I can get feedback from readers in the real world and move on to the next project. I hope it will be a pony but I know in my heart I need a few more years of riding lessons before the pony appears. But I won't make progress unless I take that first step of putting my work out there.

What have been your experiences with the pony wish?