Thursday, December 02, 2010

December 2: Writing

I'm participating in #reverb10, a month-long challenge to blog every day of December based on prompts provided here.

Prompt: Writing. What do you do each day that doesn't contribute to your writing -- and can you eliminate it?

This is a pretty easy one. It starts with an "I" and ends in "nternet."

It's so easy to get distracted when I hit a tough patch in my writing. Especially when every single word could be a tough patch – that's a lot of opportunities to get distracted! I've been trying to work on this lately, but it's a challenge. At my job (I'm a copywriter), I sometimes really need to force myself to finish a sentence before looking up something kind-of-not-really related that might help me gain more insight about the topic at hand.

Another thing that prevents me from writing more is fear. I always think I have nothing good to write about. It's one reason I don't write more here. For every post you see on this blog, there are probably three others I started writing and deleted because I thought they sucked.

Fear affects my writing outside of this blog, too. I've thought a lot about freelancing for various publications in Chicago, but haven't pursued it. I don't think I have enough good ideas or don't think I'll do a good enough job. I think I don't have time. I think it's too hard.

The "too hard" part really kills me. Since when did I not do something that was too hard? Especially after I read this article on freelancing today:
Freelancing is that remarkable stretch from February to December 2009, where I wrote entire features… using only my phone, a first-generation iPhone jailbroken for T-mobile, bought for $100 from a friend at Mac Week. That was because my computer had broken and I couldn't afford a replacement.
Really? If that guy can do it, then so can I! (Although he could have used the computers at the public library for free.)

Can I eliminate the Internet and fear? No, not really. But I can try harder not to let these things get muddled up in my writing, for sure. Absolutely. No doubt about it.

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