Day 4: Getting Your Bearings
Today is about figuring out what type of writer I am in terms of making writing a daily ritual. Even though this is only day 4, it has been a really fun process so far. Making my students are part of this has also made it quite entertaining. I’m gaining confidence in sharing my work. Naturally, they compliment me. They’re sweet, and I’m not sure they would tell me if I suck anyway. However, just the act of reading a fictional piece to them and putting myself out there has been freeing. Each time I read it, I get a little less fearful.
I have yet to get up early and write as I’m supposed to which leads me to believe that I may be one of those people who just needs to find/make time to write each day. One thing that has been new and exciting is that I look forward to finding time to write, and I was disappointed and upset on the two days that I didn’t. It has been a long time since I’ve felt such a strong desire to sit down and work on something. This blog helps quite a bit.
What Type of Writer Am I?
Such a good question. And such a hard one. Here’s what I know:
- There are two places that I absolutely love to go when I want to work on writing: Starbucks and my deck. Sometimes I’ll even do both in the same day. Noise is not a distraction. That’s probably the teacher in me because there are so many things that have to be tuned out in the classroom on any given work day.
- There doesn’t seem to be any particular time of day right now that I’m motivated to write more than other times; however, in a little over a week, I’ll be on summer vacation. During the summer, I typically start my mornings writing about or researching my interests. It’s the busy school year that makes scheduling really tough.
- I really like to write by hand, but I have wrist issues that keep me from being able to do this for long periods which makes typing the logical answer. I also have a newer Mac that I absolutely love, so that makes it easier to accept my physical flaws and their inability to withstand a lot of writing. (Stupid wrists!)
- I think I look for the ideal writing time too much and need to figure out how to push that nonsense out of my head.
- I don’t know if I’ll be an everyday writer or not. Even though I struggled for two days to find twenty minutes to write, I also had no problem sitting down at 10 PM after Cam’s baseball game to write for an hour and a half. Even as I write this post, I’ve already spent a good thirty minutes or more on it. When I do sit down and write, it’s for a good chunk of time.
I may not know for sure what type of writer I am, but I know some of what works and doesn’t work. I’m hoping to learn a lot more over the next 26 days as I continue this 30-Day Writer’s Boot Camp.
Overcoming My Ink Monster 
Reading this, and putting it together with other feedback about Writer’s Boot Camp, I’m wondering if my insistence on getting up early to write was wrong-headed. Have you read Gretchen Rubin at all? She talks about knowing whether you’re a lark (mornings are good) or owl (nights are good). Maybe I shouldn’t force people to be larks if they’re not. The fact that you wrote for a good long stretch after such a long day starting at 10 PM stuns me! I couldn’t do that without a next-day deadline, like I had in grad school. Maybe it’s just a matter of finding the optimum time that works for you. Sounds like you are doing that.
I have read Gretchen Rubin. I struggle though because I don’t feel like a lark or an owl. However, I don’t feel that insisting on getting up early was wrong-headed. When it comes to working out, experts will always say working out in the morning works well because you can’t put it off during the rest of the day. I suspect that’s where you were going with that, and I’m in complete agreement.