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Write Here, Write Now

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I was working on the tab(let), late one night,

– on statistics for @Tiggerlion’s end of year poll. when he said, in an e-mail, “I’m dying to know what your New Year’s resolution is”.

In previous years, I’ve done ‘Image Resolution’ – a sketch every day for a year (2014); and ‘Consecutive Compendium of Culture’ – 26 fortnights of alphabetized threads (2015). Last year (I can say that now) there wasn’t one and I hadn’t really thought about doing one this year.

I was intrigued by the gauntlet thrown down and have spontaneously decided to throw myself into a new challenge – to write something (anything) every day for 2017. Being a fairly passive kind of person, it’s been quite easy to live an unexamined life recently, and I’ve heard that’s not worth living. Setting myself the discipline of drafting text every day might help me to reflect more.

Learning from previous experience, I won’t be posting everyday on here, but on my own WordPress account. I might try to report in on the monthly blogger takeover.

I don’t yet know what I am going to write, how personal it is going to be, or whether it will sputter out like a brief, but over-ambitious and ill-thought out candle. But, in for a penny…

There’s got to be a gimmick, of course. And I’ve decided, as it’s 2017, to listen to some music for 3 minutes and then write for 17 minutes (makes a total of 20). So, if you want to help me along the way/torture my eardrums, I’m open to suggestions for the soundtrack – doesn’t have to be as great as this inspiring Kiss track, of course.

Any thoughts on writing or even questioning as to what this post is even doing on the blog are also welcome below:

Happy New Year to you all.

https://salwarpe.wordpress.com/

2

Comments

  1. Great resolution; please post the blog link.

    I am doing something similar although paper-based; I’ve also set a challenge of a new-to-me album a day which might be pushing it, but we’ll see.

    One tip I read was to do ‘morning pages’- sit down, straight away before the world kicks in, and write three pages on whatever- topic doesn’t matter. By about page 2 you get to something good (allegedly). Annoyingly I got out of the habit but it was useful (to me). I’m sure you could get something post/blog-worthy from three pages of stream-of-consciousness. So you could stick your music on, and them aim for 3 pages in 7 minutes. 😀

    I look forward to your writing!

  2. Sounds like a superb plan, so much so I feel inclined to nick the idea.
    Sadly, my inherent procrastination would see me fall over by 3rd January, so I’ll just have toread yours.
    Gis a link!

  3. You are the most determined resolution keeper I’ve encountered, sal. You are very disciplined. This one sounds great. I’m a very slow writer. It would take me twenty minutes to complete a couple of paragraphs. I’m sure you are mch more productive.

    If you are only going to report back monthly, how are we going to inspire you with a daily three minute piece of music?

    • The theory is Tig it’s a physical thing not a mental one, so you start writing – anything really, gibberish even, and the synapses all start firing and good stuff emerges by the end of the page. Key thing is not to edit as you write.

      • Ah. I see.

        I don’t write much; reports and presentations for work, reviews here. I ‘compose’ in my head, especially when walking the dog, rehearsing phrases repeatedly. When I finally sit down, I capture my thoughts as carefully as I can, then readjust. I spend far more time lost in thought than actually typing. I can’t imagine stream-of-consciousness working for me.

        • I’m much the same as you but in creative mode it does work. Different to writing a report, where if do a little plan etc. Give it a try for fun.

  4. Good idea. I do something similar musically – try to come up with an idea a day, which could be a tune, a few chords, a little riff or some words.

  5. Thanks for the comments, guys – it means a lot to get a supportive boot up the arse like that. Good to read of your own individual projects, too.

    Tig, you could post songs on this thread, if you like.

    The two reasons not to post more regularly are:
    1. Avoiding clogging the sidebars with @chiz baiting ego posts
    2. The slim possibility that the whole series would disappear like most of my Image Resolution threads did with the Great Hack of 2014.

    If anyone can think of a good compromise between posting everything and posting nothing, let me know.

    The URL of the blog is at the bottom of the OP, by the way. You can pop in there whenever you fancy, whether or not any of it appears on this site.

    • It’s hard isn’t it. I could clutter the place up with my musical ramblings but no one would be interested so in the end I occasionally put them on Facebook (where no one is interested either). And why should they be…

    • @salwape I really like your fortnightly art attacks – there was a very good Picasso-esque guitar as I remember – it was just that the ‘Everything that begins with A’ project seemed to me to be the exact opposite of creativity.

      I used to write ego-posts on the Word site under another name. I’d put a lot of effort into writing them, just to impress the magazine team, to be honest.How shallow is that? But it taught be to write taut and since then those pieces have become a blog (My Homework Ate The Dog) and a book (Farrow And Ball Will Be Named In Our Divorce). As others have said, it’s like exercising a muscle; you have to work out every day and even though it’s sometimes shit, you get less shit and more not shit the more you do it.

      • Thanks for your response, @chiz. Although slightly teasing, I did see your point about the compendium, (although I would still l attest that it made for snapshots of the variety of AW tastes). The site offers a fairly blank canvas for cultural expression, and it’s good to know where the limits of consensual acceptance for that expression are. Boundaries help to frame and define what is and what isn’t Afterword.

        I’m glad you liked the sketches. As you say, exercising a muscle – then it was hand-eye coordination with images, this time I’m hoping for direct focusing of the brain muscle, just through sheer practice.

      • Cheers, tig. Nice of you to say that. I certainly felt more at ease with implements and materials of paper marking, and notably broadened my comfort with a colour palette.

  6. Guy at NYE party asked a great question (of himself earlier in the year) – what was the last thing you made?

    Mkaes you think back, and then plan for the next thing (particularly if like me you cant remember)

  7. Great idea and best of luck with it Sal. Any variant on the RAM album club of deliberately subjecting yourself to a new ‘thing’, then writing about it, has got to be good. Maybe you could spend your year immersing yourself into something new every month or week. Like thrash metal. Or hot yoga. Or saying hello to everyone you meet/pass. Or volunteering. Or running. Or busking. Or reading The Sun/Daily Telegraph/Spectator. Or reading only science books. Or meditating. Or using only a scooter to get around. Or just saying yes. Something like that anyway. I’d be interested in reading that kind of immersion experience anyway…

  8. “Listen for 3 minutes, write for 17 minutes”

    How about a completely random choice from your collection – listen to it and see what memories/thoughts it invokes.
    It might be something totally familiar, or it might be something you haven’t heard for years (it also might be something filed under “Why the effinell did I buy that?”)

  9. I read a few writing tips on Twitter in the last few days . One was just to have a stock phrase and start with that and then go from there .
    The other was to write little and often with alarms or timers to help you along .

  10. I like all the ideas coming in. At the moment, I am happy to keep it as a fairly open-ended project, but might theme some weeks or months as suggested.

    Right now, I’m happy to witter away on here, to avoid having to start the first one. Procrastination? What’s that? Let me look it up on Wikipedia…

  11. Well, I’ve done the first one – some 490+ words in 17 minutes (what can I say – I’m a slow typist).
    https://salwarpe.wordpress.com/2017/01/01/write-here-write-now-1-new-years-day/

    Two things I realized:

    * 3 minutes is not long enough to listen to and pay attention to a piece of music (no matter how short it is)
    So I decided to lengthen it to 20 minutes listening, which gives you more scope if you were thinking of suggesting songs.

    * 17 minutes isn’t that long to give to writing – pretty much once you’ve started and warmed to a theme, it’s time to stop.
    I’m going to stick to this, unless I really get into a subject, as there’s an old cliche my dad likes to quote – ‘I didn’t have enough time to write something short, so I wrote something long’. I want the discipline of writing a short text to concentrate my language – be precise and concise as my old English teacher taught in his teaching . Also , there’s going to be days when I, quite frankly, will not be arsed to write for any longer than that.

  12. Nice idea!
    For a short time I used to randomly open a dictionary and pick a word from the chosen page to use as the title (and inspiration) for a short story. I really enjoy setting myself challenges of that kind, writing something from more or less nothing.
    Another exercise that I regularly use is one I made up many years ago as a way to get over writers block (which I no longer suffers from, but if it’s because the method worked or because with age I no longer put any pressure on myself to achieve a great result, who knows…)
    I call it “poetry games”; in the morning I’ll write down fifteen random words at the top of a sheet of paper – trying hard to avoid using words that “go together” – and then forget all of them during the day until I get home from work, when I sit down and write a poem where all of those words (and many more, of course) are being used. I can’t use too long thinking about it, twenty minutes is the target. The end result isn’t really the point of the exercise, but a surprising number of these poetry game products turn out OK or quite good.
    For the past three years I’ve used this exercise as an “Advent Calendar Project” – I have a reusable wooden Advent calendar with little drawers where you can put sweets etc, but I write down fifteen words on a scrap of paper and put one note in every drawer, well in advance of December. Then I take out a note each night and write a new poem using the words on the note of the day. Great fun! 🙂

      • Thanks guys! I’m sure someone, somewhere at some point in time must have made up some similar exercises – it’s a bit like doing a crossword but with all of the words forming a story…a good way to keep your mind sharp, I think.
        Do try them for yourselves, both are just good ways to get started and once you get started it’s like riding a bike downhill; you don’t need to pedal much!

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