Betsy Lerner's Blog, page 22

With Your Chrome Heart Shining in the Sun Long May You Run

You know it’s DAY 8 because the sun is shining, your monitor’s humming, there are Wheat Thins shards in the bottom of the box and your brassiere is snug but not too snug. Yes, bitches, you’re writing. Can you feel the burn? Yes, I had a better day today. Self loathing in abeyance for a bit and a good simile can make my day. Keep going, keep going, keep going.

What’s your poison: fiction, non-fiction, poetry, essay, villanelle, etc.

I Watched You Suffer a Dull Aching Pain

DAY 7. If you are reading this it means you have planted your beautiful ass in a chair for thirty minutes for an entire week and committed for three more weeks. Your biceps must be looking fantastic. Your digits sleek. I’ll be honest I had another shit day. Not only did I barely produce a few sentences, I started to doubt the entire enterprise. I tend to go global, so don’t be alarmed. My mother used to say that I was all or nothing. I sort of feel that’s one of the few good things about me. Well, that’s the whole point of this fucking exercise: you get back on the horse the next day and see where the next thirty minutes takes you.

And the Moment That You Wander Far From Me

DAY 6!!!! Full disclosure: I had a shitty thirty at the keyboard. I couldn’t get out of park. I corrected a few typos and wrote two paragraphs that I immediately deleted. I started to wonder what I was doing, insecurity flooded in the form of dry mouth, self flagellation, and lunch planning. The beauty of this money-back guaranteed 30 day program is that we have tomorrow to sit down and see what the fuck.

Good day? Bad day? Spill.

Close Your Eyes and Think of Me

If you are reading this, you’ve made it to DAY 5 of our 30 day 30 minute writing challenge. Amazing! If you’re just joining now,

jump in and jump start your writing. I don’t want to brag, but my 30 minutes flew by this morning from start to finish.

I’m not going to say I was on fire, but it was hot. Usually, when I sit down to write, I imagine I need a few hours if not more.

And that has been a big impediment. I do long for more time, but getting something done, producing a few new pages, connecting with a project that was heading for the crypt is really rejuvenating. Also, I apologize for being so positive and upbeat.

What is the first thing you remember writing? Mine was a diary, age 6, that chronicled the ways in which life was unfair.

It’s Hard to Get Just Upon a Smile

DAY #4 Who’s still with me? I spent my thirty minutes going over earlier pages. I think the goal, ideally, is to write new material. And I meant to but I also needed to touch base with earlier pages. Were there redundancies? Discrepancies? What could I do better? Sometimes you just need to start at the beginning of the diving board. Tomorrow, I’m going to push myself forward. But the bigger victory was simply that I did my thirty minutes before doing any other publishing work. In other words: bite me.

What in your life competes for your writing time?

That’s Why I’ll Always be Around

You made it to Day 3!!! If you missed a day, just jump back in. There is going to be a huge reward for the people who stick with it, which of course is the satisfaction of knowing you did it. I spent about fifteen minutes of my time going over the last few pages and making corrections. Then I hit upon a tangent and took it all the way down river. Generating new material is such a fucking drug. Maybe that’s why we keep doing it. To get a contact high off your own word bracelets.

Where is your story set? Mine’s in New Haven, New York, Pennsylvania, London, Arizona and the Keys.

Oh God It Looks Like Daniel

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My life’s battle has been to put my work first. So yesterday, DAY 2, was a revelation in that I actually have a half hour and I can actually make some progress. Okay, don’t get excited. It’s only the second day. But I feel all of you with me. And I also feel I can’t let you down. Basically, I’m your bitch.

Please put the last line of what you wrote yesterday in the comments.

My Head Is Spinning

So it looks like we have 27 people taking the Betsy Lerner 30 day challenge. I don’t know about you, but I’m PUMPED. Here’s what happened to me setting out on this “journey.” I got up early to get some editing done. The whole time I kept telling myself to do my writing. Take the half hour. And then I did it. I literally looked at my watch and started. The first fifteen minutes were brutal. The second fifteen flew by. It was amazing. I had to stop because of “work.” But I’m feeling it.

What was your Day #1 like?

Chapter Two I Think I Fell in Love with You

So I just completed a workout regimen. Thirty minutes of exercise for thirty days. I’m not even going to talk about how svelt I am, or how much sand is running through this hourglass body of mine. Instead, I want to challenge all of us nutcakes who read this blog to write for thirty minutes every day for 30 days or until Thanksgiving. Every day. Thirty minutes.

Who’s in?

Words are Flowing Out Like Endless Rain Into a Paper Cup

If you write every day, is it prayer? A form of prayer. Or squid ink? Or a strand of floss on the bathroom floor. If you write every day, do you go to heaven or hell or Graham Green’s desk. He wrote a page every day. Think about it. I still say write by hand, still believe it’s a form of prayer, contact between the pen and page, pressing down, your singular handwriting, your hand. If you write every day you will get better. There may be a sentence you’ve yet to write that wants your blood. Are you prepared to give it? And what would you steal? A kidney? A phrase? A shade of blue? What if you wrote every day and found a wee pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, or three pieces of coal or an Abyssinian cat. What if your sentences choked you to death, or cradled your head, or played Gin Rummy waiting for the ultimate discard? What if you wrote an unrecognized masterpiece, or the emperor’s new clothes were Gucci?

How often do you write and what’s your excuse?