The Himrich Library, 10/13/24
Self-help thoughts and a tasty story tidbit.
Hello, everyone!
I hope that you're all having a lovely October and that your writing endeavors are going well. Despite a few work/health-related setbacks on my part, I am happy with the progress I've been making in the past two weeks. I am just over 5,000 words deep into the novella, and I am making revisions to a short story that I've also written during this time. The latter will definitely be ready for publication here by the end of this month, along with a longer piece that I've had completed for a while. For now, I'll entice you with a brief excerpt of the short story:
Felicity Crane kept a clean, well-ordered cabinet that was nigh indistinguishable from one found in any mortal kitchen. Mason jars full of spices, herbs and powdered gemstones lined the middle shelf, just above the stack of mixing bowls and beneath the row of handmade notebooks that served as her grimoires. There were no "eyes of newts" or "toes of frogs" in Felicity's cabinet. The jars on her ingredient shelf bore labels with names like "Mercy Jasmine" and "Purified Peppermint." The most dog-eared pages in her favorite grimoire contained the recipes for a Philter of Good Fortune, a Moonlit Skin Tonic and something she called Harmony Coffee.
So on the night that she discovered where (and with whom) her boyfriend had been going every Thursday evening, Felicity's potion cabinet proved to be of little help as she tearfully and drunkenly looked up the components for a vengeance hex.
What I'm Reading
Uncharacteristically for this season, I have set the horror stories aside for the time being and started digging into some nonfiction. Specifically, a self-help book. Having seen that Atomic Habits by James Clear was one of the most popular nonfiction titles on Audible, I decided to give it a try. I need helping forming good habits of my own, after all. And despite a few moments that gave me pause—how strange it is to hear Scott Adams be referenced as a source of good advice these days!—I'm already finding the basics of Clear's teachings on forming/breaking habits to be useful in my own daily life.
Clear suggests that incremental progress and gradual improvement over time is more beneficial to the development of habits than trying to focus on attaining a single goal, like losing a certain amount of weight or finishing a creative project. Your goals are still useful for guiding yourself down the path you want to take, but you'll ultimately see more progress just by building up a consistent flow of work and making small positive changes to your life wherever you can; Clear calls these your "1 percent improvements." I had found myself incorporating these small improvements into my daily routine already, like trying to build up my reading and writing habits by slowly increasing the amount of time I spent doing those things each day.
Another good piece of advice from the book is that changes in your behavior, whether positive or negative, start at the level of your personal identity and attitude about yourself. To make a developing habit take root, Clear says, it can help to start by consistently saying "I am the type of person who does X thing" and make decisions based on that. Not just "I am trying be this," but "I am this." Clear gives the example of a person refusing a cigarette because "I'm trying to quit smoking" vs. a different person doing the same because "I'm not a smoker." The latter person will likely have more long-term success breaking their habit because they've changed their perspective about themselves and their relationship to smoking. I'll add to this with some personal examples like "I'm going to do some writing, because I'm the kind of person who reads and writes every day" and "I'm going to take the stairs to get to work instead of the elevator, because I'm the type of person who is physically active."
Atomic Habits is a good resource: it's short, and Clear states his ideas in plain, accessible language that makes them easy to digest. I've only finished listening to the first section of the book so far, but I'm eager to sink my teeth into the bulk of it and get more tips to help me improve my daily life and strategize my habit-forming process.
I'll see you here next time. Have a wonderful day!
—Dana
