After years of using Scrivener, I’m finally looking up how to do certain things—like change the paragraph formatting within the editor windows. Turns out it’s easy to set the default configuration that you like—I like a paragraph indent with a large font. Preferences->Format. Since I have a Mac, I can highlight lots of text files at once and with Document->Convert->Convert formatting to default text style. Voila! It looks the way I want. Dang, why didn’t I Google that months, or even years ago?
Because it’s easy to tolerate things, even things that don’t fit quite right. Pretty sure there’s a life-lesson in there. Maybe something about tolerating living in the midwest in Winter. Then again, doesn’t Chicago look pretty on a nice day in February?
After thirty years of ‘let’s put that in the attic,’ it was time to clean it up. Sorting through the attic stuff has inspired me to clean up other areas, such as my crafts. And gave me a reminder to continue my never-ending struggle to keep my writing in order.
It is time to acknowledge that I’m never going to finish some projects, such as the embroider of an old mill, or if I did finish it, have a place to put it since the closet is already hosting a lovely picture of parrots and bears on balloons and a scenic woodside. I often brought this project on trips ‘in case I wanted to do a craft project.’ I rarely did, so have downsized to a much smaller embroider project that I can bring along and ignore.
But giving up some of these projects is giving up on the dream of working on them, sometimes with my children. It’s hard, and it requires facing that some things we won’t have time for.
It’s hard.
But with writing, I never have to give up. Earlier projects can sit nicely in a folder waiting. They don’t need to be moved if the house is being downsized. I like writing projects.