Yesterday, I wrote not one 10-minute write, but two free writes of I don’t know how much time, one in the morning, and one at the end of the day. For the first time in ages, I was excited to scatter thoughts on a page: not for a purpose, not for a blog post. Just to write for the sake of writing. I prioritized it over work, over reading, over to-do lists, cleaning, and chores.
I understand that aesthetics are important. In the the past, I have given my site a makeover when I felt uninspired about blogging. To actually want to open my laptop and write a post, I have to enjoy spending time on my site. I have to be pleased by the way the words and images look on my little online home. My space has to be pretty. It has to be a place I want to hang out.
Otherwise, I’ll stop going.
It didn’t occur to me the same would be true for pen and paper. A couple of years ago, I switched to 59¢ composition books. It was getting too expensive to fill fancy journals at the rate I was writing. I still wrote on paper afer the switch. No biggie. Except then I didn’t.
I’ve lost track of how long it’s been since I wrote in one of my supermarket composition books. I don’t even know where my active one is. On vacation I wrote in a Moleskine, but only because it was in my purse, and I didn’t feel like opening my laptop. It wasn’t because the Moleskine was calling me.
This journal, though. Yesterday morning, I couldn’t wait to get out of bed and make coffee so I could write on the pretty pages. At the end of the day, rather than taking work to our daughter’s guitar lessons, I took my new journal. I wrote again instead of picking work back up.
I wanted to spend time in the lovely leaves Bridget Collins created, spilling ink, and wondering with each turn of the page what botanical delight I’ll come across next.
Mobile is the future of the web. Some folks live on the Internet exclusively through their mobile devices these days, and more are getting comfortable checking email, browsing for restaurants, and consuming content on their tablets and phones than ever before.
So of course, I figured I should get on board too. I like to set challenges for myself to keep blogging fun and new, and to inspire me to keep publishing. My newest blogging project is to publish exclusively from the mobile WordPress app for one month. I started on the train to the airport in Vienna, and since then I’ve only been posting from my phone.
It’s an interesting experience. I’ve noticed I write differently depending on the device I’m using. Pen and paper feels contemplative and goes deeper into my imagination or psyche. On the laptop, I write more businessy type posts. In fact, if I want to write about career or work, I don’t use paper at all – I go straight for the keyboard. Creative writing requires ink.
Mobile writing is immediate. I can take it anywhere. Right now I sit alone in the car in the aquatic center parking lot on an early Sunday morning. Rain dribbles down the windshield, Justin Bieber is on the radio, and I feel an immense satisfaction from the tapping sound of my phone keyboard. I’m pretty proud because for years I have been a single finger typer on my phone. As of three days into this project, though, I transitioned to turning my phone sideways so I can use my thumbs, and I can now use both hands.
It’s the small victories.
Posts published via mobile will be tagged wponthego.
You don’t need this post. You’re an awesome blogger, right? You post exciting content every day and you never ever run out of ideas, amiright?
Yeah. Me neither.
Days go by, and then weeks. You think about how good posting would feel: to write, to publish, to get those likes and comments. But you don’t actually do anything about it. The longer your blog sits there, the more pressure you feel to make your next post AWESOME. Which of course means you now have writer’s block, because really, who can write under the pressure of having to write something amazing? So you don’t post. Your visitors leave. Your views dry up. You feel like a terrible blogger and you go cry in a corner.
Your blog doesn’t have to sit empty
When I started working full time, I no longer had time or focus for my blog. I stopped publishing regularly. My views and followers dwindled. I felt bad about myself for neglecting the blog I had grown to love, and that helped me find my career path with WordPress.com.
Abandoning my blog was not okay with me. So I tried to figure out what was keeping me from blogging. I determined that I had two blockers: time and topics.
During my blogging drought, I’d think “I don’t have time for my blog anymore,” or if I made time, I’d sit down with my pen and paper only to be blocked by, “I don’t have anything interesting to say.” So I came up with a way to make time, and I devised a tool that ensured I’d never run out of topics
Time
I was a once member of a weekly writing group. We did what’s called “free-writes”: we’d set a timer, write for 10 minutes without lifting our pens from the page, and when the timer dinged, we put our pens down and read what we wrote.
To make time in my life for blogging, I iterated on the idea of the free-write and decided to carve 10 minutes out of my day, every day, to write.
Use a timer to guide 10-minute free writes
Ten minutes is so little. You can do it after an early morning walk, when exercise has gotten your creative juices flowing. Or you can do it as soon as you wake, when you’re still in a dream state. Or you can do it on lunch, or with a cocktail. Or in bed at night when you realize, oh crap, I haven’t written yet today.
The main thing to remember is that ten minutes can be squeezed in anywhere in the day.
To REALLY make this work, here’s a pro-tip: Create a cue. Carve out a specific time of day and create a trigger for your writing time so that you will make a habit of it. Set an alarm for when you want to write, and give yourself a reward for following through. I give myself coffee to go with my writing time. Pairing a trigger, like an alarm, with a reward, like coffee, will help you build a habit of writing every day.
Carve out time every day for writing, and reward yourself for following through.
Topics
The ten-minute write takes care of the time issue, but what about topics? When I stopped blogging after starting my full time job, I found it difficult to begin posting again. The longer my blog sat inactive, the higher the wall of my writer’s block grew. Each time I thought about writing, I fretted: “But what will I write about?”
Again, I’ll turn to a writing group strategy. At our gatherings, we always placed a silver box filled with folded slips of paper in the middle of the table. At the beginning of each free write, one of us would pull a piece of paper from the box and read the words written on it aloud. We’d then write for ten minutes about whatever the prompt was.
Fill a box with writing ideas — a grab bag of topics
This same strategy works for blogging. To create a prompt box, snip a sheet of paper into about 30 slips. On each slip, write a word or phrase that has meaning to you. Examples of some of mine are marshmallows, reading on boats, and prairie grass. If you’re writing for a business site, you could seed your box with employee names, materials you use, or anything unique to your business or the way it operates.
Once you’ve written your prompts, fold the slips and place them in a box. Whenever you sit down to write, if you have nothing to say, pull a prompt out and start writing.
Start publishing
To overcome writer’s block and start publishing again, pair the ten-minute free write with the prompt box. During the time you’ve carved out for your writing, grab your timer and your box. Pull a prompt, write for ten minutes, and when the timer dings, stop writing.
You’re skeptical. You wonder, Does this really work? What about editing?
In April, I dedicated to publishing a 10-minute write every day for 30 days. Each morning, I poured a cup of coffee before my work day started, pulled a slip of paper from my prompt box, started a timer, and wrote until the timer dinged. I did a quick scan for spelling and punctuation errors, then scheduled the post to publish the following morning.
The scheduling delay allowed me to do extra editing if I wanted to, but I rarely did. Why didn’t I edit? Because during that month, I learned to live by the creed, Perfect is the enemy of Done.
Don’t let perfectionism be a blocker to publishing.
Publishing this way is liberating. Some posts will bomb, but some posts will take off more than you can anticipate. It’s like shooting 100 frames to get the right photograph: every shot isn’t going to be brilliant, but each click of the shutter helps you improve and sets you up for when a prime moment arrives for you to capture it; because you’ve been practicing, and because you’re ready, you’ll capture it beautifully.
Using the prompt box and the timer, I published every day in the month of April. My blog no longer sat empty and neglected. Visitors climbed 26%, and views increased 45% over the previous month, from 3700 in March to 5400 views in April. My blog was active again, and readers loved the spontaneity of it. In fact, they got involved by sending me prompts. When I wrote from a reader’s prompt, I gave credit and linked back to their site, helping build community.
Views climbed from 3700 in March to 5400 in April, when I published a 10-minute free write every day for a month.
Giving yourself meaningful topics to write about and then carving out the time to write will get you not only practicing, but will get you publishing again. It will make your blog active and will bring visitors to your site.
Starting is the hardest part. Once you start, the writer’s block wall will begin to crumble. By making a habit of writing, and by making sure you always have topics on hand, you’ll be able to reduce that wall to a pile of rubble that you can easily kick out of your way.
Now is the time to break down that writer’s block wall. Create a prompt box today.
How to get started? Right here, right now. Create a prompt box. Make a list of 20 things you love: chocolate, sausage, fonts, portraits.
When you are out in the world, whether eavesdropping in a coffee shop or observing people on park benches, make notes of objects or scenes that strike you. Record a voice memo on your phone or ink these ideas on your hand so you can remember them. When you return home, add those mementos to your prompt box.
Then? Write.
More ten-minute protips:
Write every day, but publish every other day. This gives your readers some breathing room, and it will allow you to stockpile posts for when you are on vacation or for those days when you don’t want to share what you’ve written.
To mix it up for your readers, keep some photos on hand. A compelling photograph with a well-written caption doesn’t require a long blog post and can take only minutes to craft.
Share a link to an online article you read, along with a quote or your own thoughts about the piece. Here is an example of this from Andrew Spittle, one from Luca Sartoni, and another from Matt Mullenweg.
Our daughter is out of town on a field trip, our son is at school, my husband is at the office, and I am home, alone with the cats, on my lunch break. I sat in the quiet house, at the wooden table, and looked out the sliding glass doors while I ate chick pea salad with lemon juice, olive oil, and basil for lunch. Birds chirped. Cat tails twitched.
After eating, I rinsed my plate and loaded it into the dishwasher. I dollaped creamy peanut butter into a square glass bowl, then mixed chocolate chips into it. I licked the spoon and I smiled at our cat while she chased a stinkbug.
Now, before going back to work, I’m sitting by the window in our living room. I’ve put my new Prince album on. I turned it up loud. Louder than I turn it up when the kids are home. I’m sitting on our lounge chair, a warm breeze blowing my hair, while I sip coffee and write my 10-minute write. I’m typing directly on my laptop instead of writing in a composition book first. Today is all about efficiency, because to be honest, I forgot about today’s write until about 8 minutes ago.
Flower petals flutter in the breeze outside. The kitties have fallen asleep after lunch, one on top of the homemade scratching post and one in the white chair. They are curled up, nose under tail. The music has switched to a slow, melodic song. The Beautiful Ones.
I could fall asleep like a cat right now. In a sunbeam with the windows open, listening to my new record.
For the month of April, I will publish a 10-minute free write each day. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. This one is from the Daily Post one-word prompt, Solitude. Trying to get back into the writing habit.
I almost threw out my journals a few weeks ago. I was in declutter mode, and I wanted the 50 lb trunk of handwritten diaries out of the closet I was trying to clear.
As I usually do when I get near that trunk, I opened it and leafed through a couple of the elegant, bound books, then a green beat up spiral notebook from high school. I closed it, embarrassed by my teenage self. What a disaster.
My dear friend Jessica laughed with me last year after she had found a stash of old lettters I had written her in 9th or 10th grade. I groaned.
“I don’t even want to know,” I said.
She laughed. “They are pretty melodramatic.”
I can only imagine. Those were my Depeche Mode emo days, though it wasn’t called emo then. When I visit my parents this summer, in fact, I’ll be able to bring home some vinyl records I bought during those years of my life: a Depeche Mode, maybe a New Order. I can’t wait to see what’s there.
I put the journals back in the trunk, next to my pile of letters from Jessica — the partners to her stash. I didn’t open them, or read any more from my own pages. When will I ever read this stuff?, I thought. Every time I open one, I am embarrassed for myself. Do I want the kids finding these? No. What a disaster.”
Ultimately, I kept them. Those thoughts may come in handy one day, like when our daugher is the age I was when I wrote them.
A few weeks later, last week in fact, when I was searching for my mission statement, I found the Moleskine from our cross-country drive from Minnesota to Virginia, where I scribbled thoughts on our move, on life, and haiku from the highway. That notebook sat open in the passenger seat the entire 3-day drive.
I sat down and read the Moleskine, smiling at the memories, grateful that I had recorded them. Relieved that I hadn’t thrown the journal out.
That would have been a disaster.
For the month of April, I will publish a 10-minute free write each day. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. This one is from the Daily Post one-word prompt, Disaster. Trying to get back into the writing habit.
For Christmas one year, when I was 9 or 10, or maybe 11 or 12, my aunt and uncle gave me a packet of stationery. They always gave unique, interesting gifts, and I remember how that packet of heavy-weight ivory paper, embroidered on the edges with cornflower blue flowers, filled me with promise: empty paper, special paper. It had so much potential.
I wrote letters on that stationery: letters to my Grandma on St. Simon’s Island, letters home to my mom and dad from Girl Scout camp. I loved that stationery. My own smooth paper with envelopes to match. Each time I pulled it out and ran my hand across it, I delighted in its prettiness. Its existance, and that it belonged to me, both inspired and encouraged me to write. It gave me a reason to get out a pen and ink words on paper.
I still prefer to write in ink. My 1o minute writes would turn to blog posts much more quickly if I typed directly into the WordPress app on my desktop. But like vinyl records, I love the physical objects of paper and pen, my thoughts in ink, undeletable, scratched in my handwriting, on a page. Personal thoughts flow more easily with a pen in my hand.
I would love to have stationery again. I use cheap composition books for my free writes, which serve their purpose fine. I coudn’t afford expensive paper for writing practice; we’d go broke.
But when I want to send a card or a letter, I am always blocked by the paper I have to write on. I don’t want to write on an ugly piece of ordinary, bleached white printer paper. So I end up not sending notes, or if I do, the process makes me sad.
Sometimes we receive pretty notes from Brian’s grandma, handwritten in ink on stationery. They feel warm and alive, and her handwriting reminds me of her voice.
The special paper, decorated with her thoughts, fills me up.
For the month of April, I will publish a 10-minute free write each day. Minimal editing. No story. Just thoughts spilling onto the page. Trying to get back into the writing habit.
Butterfly Mind 