I will be presenting a workshop entitled “How to Improve Your Writing in Just 20 Minutes a Day” in April, 2012 at the Story Circle Network national writing conference in Austin.  I am pleased to have had my proposal accepted.  This is a fine organization and I’m proud to be included.

I conceived of this blog as part of that workshop, thinking that if I practiced what I preached, then I’d have not only more credibility, but also more clarity concerning the obstacles one faces when making what seems a tiny commitment.  I realize that putting my pieces on a blog requires a bit more nerve than writing for 20 minutes a day in a journal, but, alas, I plan to suggest that the workshop attendees start their own blogs to keep track of their commitment.  There’s something about knowing that someone might read what you’ve written or else notice that you didn’t write like you said you would that keeps me banging out a piece, even if it’s a bad piece, and posting it.  I am someone driven by external expectations, perhaps.  Or else, there’s just something very clear to me about getting these words on the page when they are going out into cyberspace versus on the pages of a notebook destined for a desk drawer.  So, I’ve decided to chronicle the five biggest obstacles so far related to writing for a minimum of 20 minutes a day.

1.  One of my biggest obstacles is getting off routine and then finding myself tired and at the end of a long day and there I am with nothing so far on the blog.  I know that whatever I write will have the benefit of my inner critic being too pooped to care.  I also know that fact will result in me sending out pieces that need a lot more work and that without that work, I might feel embarrassed about.  Alas, I am forcing myself to overrule that thinking and simply sit down and write regardless of the quality.  All first drafts are crap – Stephen King is only one of dozens of famous writers who have said this.  Alas, a crappy first draft may be the impetus for a fabulous story down the road so I am just writing and hitting send.

2.  Another obstacle is my fear of boring whatever audience I have.  “What if this just isn’t interesting?” plagues me on a regular basis.  And the truth is not everything I write will be very interesting and much of it may not ever be interesting to any one person at any given time.  Still, I have found that pieces I thought were mere chronicles have ended up with several positive comments and other pieces that I thought were compelling have gone without a single “Like.”  That doesn’t mean I don’t like that piece anymore, it means instead that I can’t always judge what someone else might enjoy or relate to.  So, again, I’m working hard to ignore that nagging voice that encourages me to “just take the night off,” and instead write whatever comes to mind.

3)  A third obstacle that is not a small one is that I am basically a private person and I feel regularly uncomfortable revealing my thoughts and feelings on the page.  I have to push myself not to pussy-foot around about what I think or feel.  I have forced myself to write and then send off several pieces that were so brutally honest about my feelings of inadequacy that under any other circumstance, I would be truly embarrassed.  However, I have made a commitment to myself that there will be no subterfuge here.  If you want to see whatever neurosis lurks, then just read my pieces.  While I don’t want to belabor the point in terms of my feeling “less than” in a few areas of my life, I don’t want to pretend otherwise.  I have read any number of places not to waste readers’ time by being anything else but as brutally honest as you can be about yourself.  What possible purpose does it serve to pretend to be somebody other than who I am?  How can there ever be any real connection with other people if I am always hiding behind a curtain?

4) The next obstacle, and it’s not a small one, is the perennial question to myself: Why in the hell are you even doing this?  What possible purpose does it serve?  This one can sock it to me.  This one requires me to reiterate to myself what my real goal is regarding writing in general and this blog in specific.  My goal is to connect with the world through the written word.  I happen to believe in the value of the written word.  I wouldn’t want to live in a world without it.  I love stories and thoughts on the page and I believe in the intrinsic value of promoting the continuation of that activity.  As my former writing mentor said, “Celebrate the written word.  It’s a gift.”

5)  The final obstacle for tonight is finding prompts that intrigue me.  I know this one is tricky.  Ideally, any prompt ought to serve equally well.  Just toss me one and off I will go, writing to-beat-the-band.  But the truth is that I need to explore a way to find more compelling prompts.  Robert Olen Butler collects vintage postcards and writes stories from the pictures on them.  That is a good idea, I can now see, because it provides a ready prompt.  I have books of photos and paintings that I could use.  Maybe I’ll have a few days inspired by one photographer or another, or one artist or another.  That might be fun.  Or a singer or a songwriter or a food or a piece of clothing.  Alas, now that I’m thinking about it, I think I may have this particular obstacle licked.  One down!

So on that note, I will now head to bed.  Please let me know which of these obstacles you can relate to or else others that you find missing from the list.  I could use your help on this since I plan to have a list of obstacles for my workshop participants, so they’ll know what to expect.  The second part of that activity will be ways to overcome those obstacles.  Please share if you’ve found effective methods to keep up that daily writing practice.

And with that, I’ll say good night.  It’s almost midnight.  I almost didn’t make my goal of writing every day for today.  But, I did, and I’m happy about that!