Improving without physical practice?

It's been a while, hello 2020!

Again, I have a new word of the year for 2020 and it's APERTURE. As my spouse brilliantly put it: you let as much light in as you want. Or as you need. So maybe this is like a spiritual journey where I get to decide what I want?

I'd like that.

We've had some struggles as my spouse has been working away all week for a whole year and it's been more time-consuming than expected. We all thought I'd have more time to myself when in fact, on school days, I had maybe half an hour or, if lucky, one hour until I should be in bed. Should...

So I've decided to stop torturing myself about money and just go out at least once a week to a cafe to write.
I've never liked coffee until I tried Analog's Fratello coffees with the very delicious oat milk from Minor Figures—I've seriously been fooled into thinking I was given cow milk. The best part? I don't add ANY sweetener. At all. That's coming from someone whose mom has been trying to get her to like coffee for decades.
Welp, I started having a cuppa every now and then. I still prefer tea, but that's nice too.
I feel all grown up now.

But enough of my food habits, I wanted to discuss 2 things.

The first one is my story, with the tentative title Mindswept. It's very likely that once that first draft finally sees its last period that it will find its rightful title.
I have done, and am still undergoing, lots of research on multiple subjects, but the real rabbit hole here is Alchemy. I've joined 2 Alchemy groups on Facebook and WOW! This is like entering a chat room for Quantum physics aficionados. I'm glad we're all so far away from each other, or else I'd be that person nodding to whatever everyone is saying and suddenly disappearing after the lunch break.
I'm glad I understand some of it, but I'm certain I don't want to go as deep as some of these guys.

So what's happening? I found out my starting point. I had written a lot so far but felt either like the intro to The Hobbit or started too much in the middle of a cliché. Given, I had written my intro a long time ago and this is going to work well with my 2nd point.

Improving a skill without physically practicing it. Specifically, I'm talking about any skills where you need to physically do something to achieve a result. In my case, I mean piano, drawing and, yes, writing.

I'm not a regular writer. First of all, I have a lot of hobbies and before you tell me to just pick one and focus on it, that's not who I am. Then I have a busy life, especially now when I'm spending even more time taking care of the household, and getting the odd call from the principal. Kids, right? One of them has started preschool 3 times a day, for 3 hours (I managed to find one that was over the measly, useless 2 hours). But that means I have to drive them and pick them up. It's close-by, so if I want to go to a cafe—remember I live in a small town away from a lot of nice facilities—I get maybe 2 hours to myself. Luckily, the cafe I like has a free 2 hours parking deal (ain't life working out nicely sometimes?). And lastly, I have my health to keep in check. Some days are worse than others. And I *should* go to sleep early.

Okay okay, I'll admit, Facebook and research are terrible time-suckers. Friday night, 2 am, anyone?

So on to my probably-lazy-and-trying-to-excuse-my-lack-of-writing-habit claim—I know you're thinking it. I used to write a lot more when I was in high school, but I didn't write every day either. I still wrote enough I could have published an epic novel before I hit my 20s. But I did shorter stories for my enjoyment only, and let's be frank, they were written by an immature being. Although, my best ones were, unfortunately, sent to the government for evaluation of my written skills.
The year-end tests were the best. Don't we just all miss school? No? Just me? Oh well.

Back in high school, I started drawing more intensively. During my last 2 years, we were given special coloured stamped sheets to write down mathematical formulas for the math tests. 90% was filled with drawings and the remaining 10% with fly-sized font of formulas.

But I had bouts where I didn't draw.

I would just observe. I didn't actively think about the craft, but when I would go back to drawing, concepts that previously eluded me were improved. Which got me to thinking that we do improve on skills related to things we are passionate about, whether we actively mean to or not.
However, I have found out, through piano learning, that actively observing, or more often in this case, listening, did improve my skills even if I didn't play every day. I can now tell what notes are forming some of the chords I hear. Nothing too fancy, but I couldn't do it before, no matter how often I looked and tried the chords from my Piano Chord Bible book. Of course, practicing is one thing that shouldn't be overlooked, and experimenting is probably a very important component. How can you truly push yourself and learn more if all you do is follow the (boring) guidelines?
Chopsticks Ad Nauseam.

Same goes for writing. Just because you are not writing at the moment doesn't mean you are not gathering information. A writer is all ears, eyes, touches, smells and feelings. Everywhere we go, we absorb data which, consciously or not, we can use for our stories. Even non-fiction.
The cool thing is that there's a thing called synchronicity. If you pay attention, things get in line to help you out. I once wrote a story where I needed to know how it would look like to escape a building through the emergency stairs. I got hired in one of the most well-known buildings in Canada as a security agent and later desk officer, and we had emergency evacuation because of a fire.
Also a bomb search, nifty.
Actually, a lot happened in that building that the public will never know about. Suffice to say, I now know where cameras generally are and how one would try to get out incognito. Whenever I didn't know how a scene was supposed to work out, life sent me a safe way to witness it. I don't know how it works, but it does. Write what you know, huh?

Lastly, this works as well for writing structure, grammar, usage, etc. That' why reading books is never wasted time. And maybe Facebook isn't either. Raise your hand if you're still part of writing group you don't feel like you're getting much out of but the regular drama is both entertaining and a learning occurrence!

So the lessons here are as follow:

Don't beat yourself up for not writing every single day, not everyone has that luxury or the will; life can take a lot out of you. As long as you do keep going until you have a finished product. After all, there is no point thinking about writing if you never do commit.

You still learn even when you are not practicing (what a weight off the shoulders!).

Ask for things you need, you might get one of them synchronicity events.


And repeat after me There is no such thing as too many hobbies!
So I don't feel alone saying it.

I will leave you with one of my favourite playlists for writing which doesn't disturb me (maybe 2-3 songs do, but I forgot which one, there are 4 albums in there.). I'm a big fan of Yoko Kanno and you may notice the style in some songs if you know Wolf's Rain and The Vision of Escaflowne. I skipped the second Album of this Ghost in the Shell Album series as it does distract me. Enjoy and if you like, support the artists who made these possible.