Allowing the right to write
(Preface) You know how you just know that it’s time for something? It’s been wafting around as a faint hint for a while but then the soft whiff becomes a nagging feeling sitting right next to you, occasionally poking you in the ribs, popping up in your consciousness at odd and unexpected times? (It’s not just me, is it?)
My heady head tells me to ignore it with thoughts like, “What a luxury, you don’t have time to spend on that.” or “Where will that lead? Don’t bother until you know why.” or “You don’t need that, you’ve got it under control already” (which, without fail, is a total lie).
The current struggle with my head along these lines has to do with establishing a daily writing practice. There is so much that want’s to take form through writing and there just isn’t time!
But then I look around at some of the folks out there who are not only running a biz, they are blogging, writing books, articles, etc. Uh…. “just isn’t time” just ain’t cutting it.
The goal, and the faint teasing that’s been swirling gently around me for years, is a daily writing practice. I’m still “making time” (or not as the case too often is) for writing–a subtle but critical difference.
You don’t have to think about a practice, you just do it. It’s a part of who you are. I feel a little off, as if I’m denying a part of myself that wants to express broadly and wildly! (End preface)
This morning I sat down to do my morning “skimming”, realized it was later than I thought, and instead opted to jump right into a writing project. But it wasn’t really a writing project, it was a planning project, which for me is often as much fun as writing (really!).
Well, that went for about 10 seconds. Happily, it was super obvious that it was going no where and fast.
While I do often engage in planning mindset activities in my writing time** what hit me this morning was that skimming isn’t writing.
(** side note: hmmm, should look at this in terms of not having enough writing time. If I use up writing time with planning activities, where does writing time go? Down the tubes, that’s where. This likely seems totally and completely obvious to the astute reader. Bear with, we all have our moments of dense-ness, eh? =)
Back up a step. I haven’t written about “skimming” yet. The name came from skim, scum, sparkle and is part of the writing process in that it clears the gunk off the top of my head, which in turn allows me to sink into writing.
So skimming is decidedly part of the writing process, but in more of a preparatory capacity. By skipping the skimming, and jumping straight into the content, my head was in it’s roller coaster, unfocused, chatty-monkey mode. (I’m thrilled I only lost 10 seconds this morning instead of trying to power through it and thereby lose all morning. And hey, we got a blog post out of it! Cool!)
Not only does skimming the scum off the ole brain make space and set the stage for more interesting things to come, it often leads me right up to the doorstep of those interesting things. So what begins as a skimming activity often ends with an article brainstormed, blog post written, or speech partially written.
Moral of the story: Don’t skip the skimming. While it results in a bunch o’gunk, it’s gunk that would have oozed onto everything else if it weren’t cleared out.
