A Little Life List: From Chaos to Creativity

Four photos, three tips, two lost items, and a tow truck...

Little Life Lists are for the complicated, unruly things life throws at us. I encourage you to write your own, too. With coffee. xoxo

Racing into the house, I intended to leave the car running to keep it warm. It’s getting cold, the sharp coating of frost has begun to make the mornings shivery and bracing.

But the keys were in my hand. Car off. No matter.

One kid at school already, a lovely chat with a writer, two kids to get out the door. My morning was buzzy and busy, but I had time for a quick coffee.

Forgetting the street sweepers…

Leaves are everywhere, startling against the morning sky, scattered all over the ground. Those guys have a job to do, so when I got back outside with two of my other kids, I wasn’t surprised to see my car hitched to a tow truck, or that it was driving away.

I hurtled toward the driver and he stopped, offering a moment of grace.

“I’m so sorry,” I begged.

As I tried to explain, he got out and then unhitched my vehicle. My little boys were thrilled, hopping from foot to foot.

Life is always switching from chaos to calm, mistakes to magic.

Pay attention

To pay attention, this is our endless and proper work.

Mary Oliver

Today I wrote a list on paper. All the things I needed to do, everything from Rake, to Get to Page 280, to Unpack Suitcase.

By 8:30 am, I’d lost the list.

No matter. I could recreate it. I pulled out my Remarkable tablet, which has lain unused for months. Spent some time creating a template, then recreating the list.

By 12:30pm, I’d lost the stylus to write on the Remarkable with. I couldn’t cross out anything as I did it…

Yet.

In all this lost attention, I paid attention to something else. The rhythm of how I felt, the slow uncurling of stories, the deep breaths I needed again and again.

The children and I crawled on our hands and knees, looked for the lost stylus.

Gone.

At 7pm, I found the original list. Only one thing on it had been done.

Be kind to yourself

Growing up, my dad told me this over and over. Last night, at three a.m., when I opened up The Plan, a delightful approach to time management by Kendra Adachi that I’m finding helpful, those exact words appeared on the page as advice.

I may have done only one thing from my list, but it was the essential: I got to page 280 of my novel.

Trust your process

Chaos clings to me. Sometimes I tidy it up, like in this photo. From chaos, I find my writing life.

When I’m annoyed that I’ve lost the stylus for my Remarkable ($42 for a new one! And normal pens don’t work. What?), I have to remember this is how I come up with my ideas. This is how I write. It’s messy. It won’t work for other people.

But.

As the tow truck departed, the little boys leapt toward the car. We would have got to school on time, but I still had to find my keys…

This last photo is of my first book. Not the first one I wrote, mind. But the first one to find its way to readers, much as this essay has found its way to you. In the tow trucks and the lost lists and the school runs, writing is always my solace.

So how do I write with four children and my wonderful job as Head of Coaching at The Novelry?

I trust the process that works for me.

xoxoxo

Alice

If you enjoyed this, please share it with someone else who has found their way to creativity their own way.

If you’re new here, my name is Alice Kuipers and I’m a writer, mother and dog-owner transplanted twenty years ago to the Canadian prairies from England. I’ve published fourteen books in 36 countries and my writing has been described as: “For storytellers and story lovers,” by Kirkus Reviews; ‘Gorgeous, heart-ripping, important,” by VOYA; and “Intense and wonderful” by Bif Naked. Join me for coffee breaks to look at lines from great writers.

Xoxo

The idea of a a Life Changing Book Club keeps coming back to me. Once a month? What do you think?

These suggestions are from a piece a few weeks ago that I link afterward. Have you read any of these yet?

Ashleigh Mattern suggests The 48 Laws of Power by Robert Green,

Ines79 suggests The Untethered Soul by Michael Singer,

Linda Hoye suggests The Road Less Traveled by M. Scott Peck,

Matthew Long suggests Roots by Alex Haley

Vicky (who I’m having trouble tagging) suggests Wild by Jay Griffiths

Bernadette (same tagging troubles) suggests The Diviners by Margaret Laurence,

Suzanne White suggests Pillars Of The Earth - Ken Follett,

Steven J suggests When Things Fall Apart by Pema Chodron

and

Arthur Slade suggests The Hobbit…

What book has changed your life?

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