Sara Crawford’s 30 Day Writing Challenge: A Beginning

I’ve been wracking and racking my brain lately in an attempt to breathe some new life into my blogging. It’s been far too long since the days of Ye Olde Livejournal where daily posts were made in abundance (sometimes overabundance…even when I had nothing to say).

Something happened a few weeks ago that took the wind out of my excuse sails. My friend Sara Crawford published a book titled:

The 30 Day Writing Challenge: Begin  or Enhance Your Daily Writing Habit

She graciously allowed me to design the cover and it’s times like that where the universe is throwing your answer in your face that you either need to take notice or end up with an Acme Anvil on your head. I decided to tackle Sara’s challenge in my blog. Feel free to play along with me! Her book is available on Kindle for $2.99.

For the next 30 days, I’ll post using the exercises in the book. I don’t care of what I write is crap. The  point is to write. Sara herself says, “The best way to use this book is to schedule at least 30 minutes every day to work on the exercises. If you miss a day, don’t beat yourself up. Simply pick up where you left off the next day.”

That’s usually where I run into trouble. I’m going to take a moment right now and hold myself accountable to finishing this 30 days regardless of the fact that I might miss a post. Self, it’s okay.

Day 1: Stream of Consciousness – “Write in stream of consciousness for 10 minutes without stopping.”

1:50pm Saturday

When I take on challenges like this, one of my biggest fears is not finishing. It’s as if, somehow, I’m letting down the creator of the challenge. My self judgment is exhausting, which is why I turn to distractions. I like unicorns. I’m in complete agreement with the fact that Rhinos are just fat, angry unicorns. Sometimes my inner rhino cries out  for glitter and malice.

That escalated quickly. The conclusion might be that stream of consciousness writing simply reveals far too much about the author’s mind. It’s a jungle of TMI. I should probably not attempt this exercise while at work. Leslie, my velociraptor, is staring at me like I’m made of meat….wait….

I think, no, at the moment I don’t think. I often find that I’m staring at the screen, mid-sentence, and have no clue how long I’ve been staring while not typing. That’s what fear does though. It stops you in your tracks and derails all of those thoughts that could turn into a beautiful piece of writing. It disguises itself in too many forms to count: exhaustion, distraction, “not enough time”, “more important things to do”, etc. I guess the point is to recognize that I am important enough to myself to make time for my writing.

Wow.

And that, folks is what happens when a rhino finds a pen.

2:00pm Saturday