7 Oct: the one minute biography

I caught sight of today’s prompt earlier on, and I confess I have been cheating. The prompt is meant to take just one minute of writing – hardly any time at all, even if you are fairly nifty with the touch typing.

For the woman who loves to write, at length (yes, think you’d spotted that), a little early planning might just mean I could fit more words into my minute. Do it more justice. Right?

Hmm. The plus side of writing for a short time is the chance for spontaneity – which is now gone, given that I know about the prompt. No one stood beside me, as on a sports field, and said: ‘One minute: write about yourself. Starting…now!’

And sometimes, spontaneity is what we’re after. That’s why things like Five Minute Friday have become so popular – because it’s about getting the words out fast, not worrying about the spelling, the grammar, the punctuation, and so on.

I’ve done a little bit of low-minute writing, a few months back. It can be quite fun, there’s no denying. But part of me seems to be wrestling with the need to have longer to say who
I am. Why?

Some of it feels like the fear of the misinterpreted exam question. ‘Oh – you meant…that kind of me.’ What kind of biography are you meant to write? Dates and locations? A series of adjectives or roles for yourself?

I’m not that good at spontaneity. That’s why other people’s writing prompts can be very good for me. They free me up. They stop me second guessing too much.

The thing with being a writing person is that writing gives you another chance to say what you mean. Who you are. It’s the clever backchat several years after the embarrassing event. It’s the conversation you wish you’d had with a friend. It’s coming to your own defence when you are not always sure who else will come.

It seems to take a certain level of self-belief to combine writing with the baldest facts about yourself. I think that’s why I’m stalling. Out here, online, I can spin you a few tales, rehearse a few memories – and leave you with what I choose to.

It’s not just me. It’s lots of bloggers. Because unless you can blog in the format of The Truman Show, you’ll never get the whole truth. There’s just not enough time to fully capture it – and would people want to read the blow-by-blow account? Would I, even?

Blogging allows you to be selective. How much to say about one thing – how to totally avoid saying something about another. And actually, that’s OK. We often write what we want to read, write the conversations we’d like to be having with our friends face to face – and write what cheers us up, on occasion.

Having got all that off my chest, I might be coming closer to giving it a go. This first bit is maybe the dragging-tyres-on-chains kind of training that sprinters do, before they are released from the weight training to just run. Fast. Maybe it’ll help.

Timer set…

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English mum, Scottish dad

Brother

A dog a decade

England, Scotland, England, Poland, Scotland, Poland, Scotland…

Self-doubt. Self-belief.

Writing. Always more writing.

Starting to write my own stuff.

Marriage. Family. All the hard stuff – all the amazing stuff.

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Done.