Reinvention: from not writing to writing about not writing

A jumble of thoughts about my adventurous spirit in the creative realm. What's next with Room with a Door? Stay tuned.

The word reinvention doesn’t exist in my bookmarked thesaurus. How can this be?

If you randomly search the word reinvention, or as a hyphenated word re-invention,on a search engine such as google, you will get results. Which is odd, because why would this word be recognized by google but not by my online thesaurus?

The internet is weird.

It also reminds us that everything we see on the internet is up for debate. Everything is true and untrue, authentic and inauthentic, right and wrong AT THE SAME TIME.

In the end, it’s a matter of perspective, or - a more eloquent term - in the eye of the beholder.

But back to reinvention. I am someone who reinvents herself all the time. Those of you who have come here from my blog will know this, and let me assure you, nothing has changed. I am still reinventing myself, my ideas, my perspectives, my views, my opinions, my worldview and even my physical appearance. (I just coloured my grey roots brown again even though I really want to grow out the grey.)

See what I mean?

Allow me to elaborate a little about this reinvention. If you stick with me, you will notice that my future on substack will undergo a reinvention as well, one that may impact your decision to say (or go) or to read (or ignore) my content going forward.

Thank you for subscribing and reading! I hope you stay. I see you and appreciate you.

Newsletters hiatus

I have without exaggeration three finished newsletters in my draft folder, two which even have the accompanied graphic art chapter headers completed and inserted. The third essay is in a state of almost completion, but without the artistic header.

These completed and almost-completed written works taunt me from my draft folder.

Publish me! Let me out of draft jail!

Among the completed material, my draft folder also contains 84 started and unfinished drafts.

84 (Hanging my head in shame.)

There are of course multi-faceted reasons, or excuses, why I’m experiencing this strong resistance to publishing the essays I’ve spent hours agonizing over since the spring. Not one of them is worthy a recount here other than to say I have no problem with the content itself - I know at least some of you would be intrigued or entertained by it - maybe even educated. But I just can’t seem to hurl it out into the internet.

I will say this:

With September approaching, a time of renewal with the start of school for many, I always feel like an impending reinvention of my creative endeavors is imminent. And this, my friends, may impact my draft folder in significant ways.

September is the New Year

Three of my household members are returning to school on that ubiquitous day after Labour Day, with my youngest beginning the last hurrah of formal education (grade 12). The others are at colleges in either work or study capacities.

I’m the only one who is not currently in (formal) school.

School, or education, has always been a mixed bag of emotions for me. I like love academics and continuously strive to educate myself albeit via reading of many books and with a diverse selection of online sources, and not in traditional classes in a brick and mortar schoolhouse.

Something about mass-produced content forced upon pupils to memorize and regurgitate repels me.

Still, the idea to go back to school appeals to me in September. Fall is my favorite season. I even bought myself a set of new pencils, pencil sharpeners and ball-point pens, to much outrage from the daughter and her dad.

“Why do you keep buying this stuff?” they demanded to know.

I pointed to a row of cups filled with writing implements strategically placed on the table behind my laptop.

“Because mine keep going missing,” I retorted. “Or, they require sharpening when they're returned by the borrower, but the pencil sharpeners also go missing”.

The package of sharpeners contains four. I usually give one to each kid, leaving me with two, but somehow, those end up disappearing as well.

Perhaps I should mention that in my room with a door - the physical one at my mom's house in the suburbs, not this publication - this disappearing act of writing implements is a non-event.

Weird, right? That room with the beloved door has some magical properties…

Perhaps I will use my new writing implements in my next reinvention project.

Hold on to your hats.

Updates

I've been thinking about adapting or modifying some projects and have started the reinvention process of some of them already. I've dropped entire projects, I'm tweaking things, and I'm taking tutorials, webinars and masterclasses as an attempt to stay current with the times. I’m learning leaps and bounds about AI and have grudgingly accepted that I must embrace, not shun, the bots which prevail no matter how many meltdowns people have. There are ways to use AI to enhance my work, but I will never ever ever allow it to write my words for me.

There, I said it. Now, allow me to update you on some of my project updates.

Substack

My substack publication Room with a Door is not on the chopping block at this time (it hasn’t been a full year yet since I launched last November) but it is one of my projects undergoing a transformation. I just haven’t decided yet what that transformation will be (although my list of potential changes is getting smaller and more concrete). I may drop some sections or incorporate them under the main headline. But I will definitely continue to write. Stay tuned for a fresh look and feel.

Blogging at WordPress

I chose WordPress after a year of blogging on Blogger (Google) some eighteen years ago and never looked back. Does this mean I love everything about WordPress? Hell no. But I am very familiar with the platform, and have taken classes and multiple tutorials and webinars about proper website design which has been an eye-opening game changer. There are so many features in WordPress that make website design easier if only you knew about them or how to use them…

If you're just starting out or contemplating starting a website or blog, I recommend taking some time to just watch some tutorials. YouTube is a great source for free content, and once you find a presenter who resonates with you, check out the rest of their content. I found most have a repertoire of easy-to-follow tutorials with time-stamped chapters to make navigating past the parts you already know easier.

My personal blog has changed a little, partly because I was rebranding and redesigning the homepage and menu of my website while I learned how to use the features of WordPress properly. I dropped off with some personal blogging but every once in a while feel the itch to get back in there and tell some story from my personal life. Blogging is an activity that comes and goes in phases; I have seen many people dropping in and out over the years, and I have been one of them on their blogs as well. I like my tribe on WordPress so I keep the blog around, sometimes just to read other people. The blog is a prominent feature of the website, so if you're interested, you can check it out here.

Gift shop

Speaking of redesigning my website and substack, I took the online gift shop down as the fees and costs to run the website were pushing me into the red. I had signed up for a second WP website and installed WooCommerce, and although I benefitted hugely from that learning experience, the cost was killing me.

Not worth it.

writerofwordsetc.ca/gift-shop

I am at this time unsure how to proceed with the jewelry (etc) but will continue to push the pieces I designed on my website/blog for now as I contemplate next steps.

Stay tuned.

Writing-not-writing

Meanwhile, the writing oompf has reduced recently, as you may have noticed. My twice weekly attempt to flood your inbox with content from substack reduced to weekly published material, typically on Wednesdays, which then also dropped off over the summer.

I’m still writing, I’m just not publishing it online (hence the 84 unpublished material in my draft folder). I seem to be suffering from a mental block which is preventing me from propelling forward with my writing, one I’m currently in the process of unearthing using various spiritual tools, including my trusty tarot cards.

Some days, this is a little bit difficult.

Speaking of tarot cards, one of the projects I started this summer of Writing.Not.Publishing was a tarot-designated YouTube channel.

Claudette Tarot Spirituality YouTube channel

The tarot-designated YouTube channel is something I’m using to learn how to produce videos, because I’m endlessly fascinated by the luring creative process. I use the free version of Canva and have some fun with it, drawing cards for zodiac signs and publishing them as shorts or longer videos.

There is another reason for playing with YouTube so much these days: my own unearthing of self-limiting beliefs or mental blocks. I figure, I have several zodiac signs present in my natal chart, why not pull cards and reframe them (ha!) for the collective?

Allow me to elaborate.

When I was born the sun was in the position of Libra. I am a Libra, through and through. The moon, meanwhile, at the exact time of my birth (4:14 pm) was in Cancer.

Those two signs make up my most prominent character traits, something I only discovered when I started playing with tarot cards (a few years ago).

• Libra is an air sign and related to thoughts and intellect (Gemini and Aquarius are also air signs)

• Cancer is a water sign and related to emotions and feelings (Scorpio and Pisces are also water signs)

Put an *overthinking air sign* together with an *emotional water sign* and form a character trait and out comes me.

So, as I’ve been practicing my unearthing activities of my mental blocks, I’ve published the content reframed for the collective, using keywords and hashtags to promote it.

The traction is, of course, slow, because I’m not doing this full-time. That’s probably my biggest challenges in all things I do involving my creative endeavors: like The Fool 0 tarot card at the beginning of his journey, I constantly seek adventure and possibility, jumping from project to project.

What I’m trying to say here is that the tarot-designated YouTube channel Claudette Tarot Spirituality serves my purposes two-fold:

1. it allows me to read my cards for selfish purposes (to unearth my own blocks or shed insights), and

2. it scratches my itch to design and publish creative content that feeds both my love for words and my love for artistic ventures in the creative realm

The other YouTube channel (writerofwordsetc) is still active, but I mostly use that one to learn things, practice, post some beagle shenanigans or travel videos. I will mostly likely chop that one or leave it idle, as I am currently not interested in pursuing vlogging outside of the tarot journey. Still, the travel section will remain because my family looks at those videos, and I have several more from my trip to Italy and Switzerland in the spring of 2024 which I will post when my routine returns with the back to school commencement.

You are, of course, welcome to check out that channel, but it’s disorganized and, well, I’m not fixing it right now. But the travel videos are fun, so please, feel free to enjoy those.

Concluding remarks

As we approach the end of summer and the New Year that is September here in the northern hemisphere, I reflect upon and reframe my reinvention process. I know with cooler weather arriving in the not too distant future, the propulsion to write more will return. Just recently, a novel I've been writing for the past four and a half years, for which I have a beta reader, came back to life. A conversation I had with that beta reader gave me an idea on how to end the novel, the part I had been struggling with for the better part of a year. Perhaps this fall and winter season I will finally finish my book?

All I could say is, stay tuned.

Thank you for reading, for subscribing, and for supporting me in my various creative endeavors.

Until next time.