What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?
Hmmmm. My instant response is “have a life,” followed by “juggle everything in that life and hope desperately that nothing crashes,” but I think that is probably more indicative of my current state of mind than anything else!
But truthfully, the opposite is actually true. Everything I do contributes to my writing–the events in my daily life gives me material, teaches me patience, offers opportunities for insights and epiphanies. My writing is only possible when it is woven in and around (and sometimes, of course, under) all the other threads in my life. I have to make the effort to keep that thread in amongst the others, or it could easily get dropped, lost, disappeared. Even if I let the daily grind keep me from sitting down and focusing on my pages, I am still making my writing richer every day.
In other ways, I wish I was better about my notebooks–I always have one close by for jotting down ideas, but do not actually jot them down as often as I should. On the other hand, I also have notebooks full of jottings and beginnings that I haven’t fleshed out, and things I’ve been revising for months or even years that I’m reluctant to release into the world. I have a printed-out essay and cover letter languishing at the bottom of my bag right now because I haven’t forced myself to go to the post office yet. Sometimes I think I don’t want to finish pieces, because then I would have to dive back into the dreaded submission/rejection process.
So what do I do each day that doesn’t contribute to my writing? I don’t follow through. I spend more time warming up, stretching, doing calisthenics, and not enough time putting myself into the game more often. In 2011, I hope to get off the bleachers and take my place at the plate, whether I knock it out of the park or go down swinging.
This is my Reverb 10 entry for today.
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