22 Days of Thankfulness: A Reflection
Nov. 22nd, 2007 10:13 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
rsadelleAs I was trying to think of what I was going to write one day about halfway through this, I noticed the way we impose limits on ourselves. ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
kaygrr said, "So I'll be posting something I'm grateful for every day now through Thanksgiving," and I decided that meant only one thing each day, and a different thing each day. (You'll notice I saved friends and family for last. That was on purpose.) I also wanted to make them something interesting. Having breakfast or waking up in the morning wasn't enough; I wanted things like belly dance, threaded comments, and Paula Abdul.
The other thing I noticed while doing this is how much I wrote all month. I did a lot of work on my Ted/Barney mpreg, even outside of writing group, and I wrote five and a half LJ entries (not including this one) that weren't about things I was thankful for. To compare, I only had three entries in October. My average for January through October is 6.9 per month, but it's worth noting that I posted a lot of give-away lists and previously written never-finished fic this year. This reminds me that there is validity in the write every day method of working on writing. I usually dismiss it because it's usually framed as "write x number of words per day, no matter how bad it is," and I refuse to write crap. This worked for me, though, because it was simple: I already had the topic, and I really only had to write one sentence, and half of that sentence ("Today, I'm thankful for") was already written. Thinking about this reminded me of Gretchen's post about her one-sentence journal:
Here's where we connect back to my first point about imposing limits on ourselves. When I first started thinking about this effect, I thought, "I should do this all year. I could have a theme each month to write something about every day." Brad suggested one-sentence stories. I thought maybe first sentences. I worry that if I leave it too open-ended, it won't work. I'm a control freak; I want the structure and the boundaries. I also worry that I won't keep up with it without making it public (Every once in a while, I think, "I should leave the house and write for a while on non-writing group weekends," and I'll do it for one weekend, and then not do it again for a few months.), but that if I post it here, it will be boring and tedious for other people. I know other people will post lots of entries every day; my self-imposed limit on LJ entries is that they have to be "real" entries, by which I mean that they have to be meaningful and thought-out, not just "x happened today." (I write all my LJ entries in Notepad, and then copy and paste them in to post. This is why you'll often read me say that I've been working on an entry for a while. That last half an entry for this time period is still waiting for me to come back and finish it.) I find reading about other people's daily lives interesting (provided that I know and care about them), but journalling like that doesn't really appeal to me; I have no desire to make that kind of record of my life. On the other hand, Gretchen also says, "Diane Arbus wrote, 'The Chinese have a theory that you pass through boredom into fascination and I think it's true.' If something is boring for two minutes, do it for four minutes. If it's still boring, do it for eight minutes, then sixteen, and so on. Eventually you discover that it's not boring at all."
I'll be pondering this over the next little while. I'd like to come up with a good plan for some kind of one-sentence writing every day by the new year, and then that can be a good project for me for 2008.
kaygrr said, "So I'll be posting something I'm grateful for every day now through Thanksgiving," and I decided that meant only one thing each day, and a different thing each day. (You'll notice I saved friends and family for last. That was on purpose.) I also wanted to make them something interesting. Having breakfast or waking up in the morning wasn't enough; I wanted things like belly dance, threaded comments, and Paula Abdul.The other thing I noticed while doing this is how much I wrote all month. I did a lot of work on my Ted/Barney mpreg, even outside of writing group, and I wrote five and a half LJ entries (not including this one) that weren't about things I was thankful for. To compare, I only had three entries in October. My average for January through October is 6.9 per month, but it's worth noting that I posted a lot of give-away lists and previously written never-finished fic this year. This reminds me that there is validity in the write every day method of working on writing. I usually dismiss it because it's usually framed as "write x number of words per day, no matter how bad it is," and I refuse to write crap. This worked for me, though, because it was simple: I already had the topic, and I really only had to write one sentence, and half of that sentence ("Today, I'm thankful for") was already written. Thinking about this reminded me of Gretchen's post about her one-sentence journal:
The idea of keeping a proper journal was far too daunting, so I decided instead to keep a "one-sentence journal."She was doing it to remember her life, but the idea appeals to me as a way to keep me writing.
Each night, I write one sentence (well, actually, usually it's three or four sentences, but by calling it a "one sentence journal" I keep my expectations realistic)...
...it's manageable, so it doesn't make me feel burdened...
Here's where we connect back to my first point about imposing limits on ourselves. When I first started thinking about this effect, I thought, "I should do this all year. I could have a theme each month to write something about every day." Brad suggested one-sentence stories. I thought maybe first sentences. I worry that if I leave it too open-ended, it won't work. I'm a control freak; I want the structure and the boundaries. I also worry that I won't keep up with it without making it public (Every once in a while, I think, "I should leave the house and write for a while on non-writing group weekends," and I'll do it for one weekend, and then not do it again for a few months.), but that if I post it here, it will be boring and tedious for other people. I know other people will post lots of entries every day; my self-imposed limit on LJ entries is that they have to be "real" entries, by which I mean that they have to be meaningful and thought-out, not just "x happened today." (I write all my LJ entries in Notepad, and then copy and paste them in to post. This is why you'll often read me say that I've been working on an entry for a while. That last half an entry for this time period is still waiting for me to come back and finish it.) I find reading about other people's daily lives interesting (provided that I know and care about them), but journalling like that doesn't really appeal to me; I have no desire to make that kind of record of my life. On the other hand, Gretchen also says, "Diane Arbus wrote, 'The Chinese have a theory that you pass through boredom into fascination and I think it's true.' If something is boring for two minutes, do it for four minutes. If it's still boring, do it for eight minutes, then sixteen, and so on. Eventually you discover that it's not boring at all."
I'll be pondering this over the next little while. I'd like to come up with a good plan for some kind of one-sentence writing every day by the new year, and then that can be a good project for me for 2008.