This is going to be a different sort of post today. I wanted to update you on where this blog and me are headed. If you don't follow me on Twitter then A) what is wrong with you? and B) you may not know that I've made a commitment to write for an hour everyday for a year. I read Malcolm Gladwell's Outliers and in it he says it takes ten thousand hours of practice to make a master. I did the math and almost started crying because even if I write everyday for an hour it would take almost thirty years to get to ten thousand hours. But I decided it was a good start anyway and that maybe the three hundred and sixty five hours I put in would make it easier for me to reach the ten thousand in less than 30 years. Or maybe the three hundred and sixty five would make me realize that this writing thing is only ever going to be a hobby for me, maybe I can't commit my life to this. Maybe I love it because I only do it when it's convenient, and I think that's okay but I just wanted to know one way or the other.
It's been about three weeks since I started and I wouldn't say it's going perfectly. It has been frustrating and difficult, and I've missed days already. The key, I'm realizing, is resilience. It's about allowing myself to mess up and then come back to it the next day without holding on to my failure. It's about writing anyway. For most of my writing life (which is only about three years) I have been writing when I feel inspiration. I've been writing when it's easy and quitting when it's not. This means I have the first paragraphs of about a hundred blog posts, the first two scenes of about ten plays, and the first pages of a short story or two. In Bird by Bird Anne Lamott says make a commitment to finishing things. That is what I'm really trying to do right now. I'm trying to write past the initial inspiration, I'm trying to wade through the mess and the confusion towards the finish line, and it's really hard, you guys. It's really really hard. I think part of that journey means making my writing less sacred. It means not worshipping perfection, it means boldly writing what I am unsure of. And since the whole point of this blog is bravery I'm going to start sharing things on here that are not perfect, and I'm going to do that by forcing myself to post at least once a week. If I have to share with you guys once a week I think it will make me share the things that I'm less confident about.
My great fear, the thing that makes me feel most vulnerable when I write is not that people will disagree with me. I expect that, I enjoy that. My fear is that what I write will not be good. Writing about issues, popular culture, feminism - these things are easy for me. Sharing my creative writing, my plays or poems or stories, that is completely and utterly terrifying to me. So, I want to start doing more of that.
When I have writer's block (which is basically all the time now) I write poems of rhyming couplets because the rhyming really limits my options and forces me to write the next line no matter how weird or confusing or mismatching. It just forces me to write. I'm going to share something I wrote on my first day.
i have writers block
and there’s no clock
to tick by slowly
man i feel lowly
i dont know if that’s a word
i could cut it with a sword
those two don’t really rhyme
but it’s probably worth a dime
writing is hard
even for the bard
i hope that’s true
i’ll just hang out for a few
So, there it is. Exactly as it sits on my desktop, no edits or corrections. Imperfect. And I'm basically breaking out in hives right now, but I'm letting it go and letting you read it.
It's been about three weeks since I started and I wouldn't say it's going perfectly. It has been frustrating and difficult, and I've missed days already. The key, I'm realizing, is resilience. It's about allowing myself to mess up and then come back to it the next day without holding on to my failure. It's about writing anyway. For most of my writing life (which is only about three years) I have been writing when I feel inspiration. I've been writing when it's easy and quitting when it's not. This means I have the first paragraphs of about a hundred blog posts, the first two scenes of about ten plays, and the first pages of a short story or two. In Bird by Bird Anne Lamott says make a commitment to finishing things. That is what I'm really trying to do right now. I'm trying to write past the initial inspiration, I'm trying to wade through the mess and the confusion towards the finish line, and it's really hard, you guys. It's really really hard. I think part of that journey means making my writing less sacred. It means not worshipping perfection, it means boldly writing what I am unsure of. And since the whole point of this blog is bravery I'm going to start sharing things on here that are not perfect, and I'm going to do that by forcing myself to post at least once a week. If I have to share with you guys once a week I think it will make me share the things that I'm less confident about.
My great fear, the thing that makes me feel most vulnerable when I write is not that people will disagree with me. I expect that, I enjoy that. My fear is that what I write will not be good. Writing about issues, popular culture, feminism - these things are easy for me. Sharing my creative writing, my plays or poems or stories, that is completely and utterly terrifying to me. So, I want to start doing more of that.
When I have writer's block (which is basically all the time now) I write poems of rhyming couplets because the rhyming really limits my options and forces me to write the next line no matter how weird or confusing or mismatching. It just forces me to write. I'm going to share something I wrote on my first day.
i have writers block
and there’s no clock
to tick by slowly
man i feel lowly
i dont know if that’s a word
i could cut it with a sword
those two don’t really rhyme
but it’s probably worth a dime
writing is hard
even for the bard
i hope that’s true
i’ll just hang out for a few
So, there it is. Exactly as it sits on my desktop, no edits or corrections. Imperfect. And I'm basically breaking out in hives right now, but I'm letting it go and letting you read it.