And…we’re back.
It’s been a while.
Trouble with not writing is, of course, it gets harder to write the longer you don’t write. Vicious circle, and all that.
But a year ago today, I started writing seriously again – a.k.a. blog phase 2.
And of all the days I needed to kick start myself into writing regularly again, today seemed to be a good one.
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I wrote before about blog phase 2.5 – gearing up for writing more seriously.
You’ll be pleased to know that, so far, Â this has consisted of lots of reading, a bit of writing that was about me or family…but not blog writing and putting it live.
This means I’ve had a good time over the summer, and I’ve learned a lot. But I am no further forward in terms of what ‘seriously’ means, and I find I haven’t written much new for the blog.
All writing is writing though, right?
I think that’s what I’ve been telling myself, along with ‘I don’t know what writing seriously looks like’.
But what I did learn, through all the reading, was the importance of just putting one word after another. Getting it done, making a start, doing it regularly. All the things I was learning when I started with my 31 days last year.
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So what to do?
Start writing daily again. Revisit the craft of it. Stretch myself a bit by trying something new – using prompts for each day.
Yesterday I was in the library, where they had a nice set of postcards out, produced by the Scottish Poetry Library. And all of a sudden, I found something that I thought would do for this month’s theme: using found objects as prompts for writing.
Found objects (i.e. things you find, in daily life) have a noble tradition in art – so why not use them for writing? There’s a chance element that I like (easier to get myself writing when it’s ‘new’ each time), as well as the opportunity for the writing to take different forms, according to the prompt itself.
To offer a little bit of a thread between the items, I’m going for an alphabet element: each item will start with a different letter of the alphabet. But not in order: just that, when it’s all done, I’ll have done the alphabet.
(I hope. I don’t know whether I’m going to come across x-rays, xylophones, or other x-otica.)
The astute reader will have worked out that October has 31 days, and the (Roman) alphabet has 26. So I’m fudging it by adding today’s intro, probably an end piece…and there’ll be three left over. I’ll come up with something. Fingers crossed.
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I may also end up doing some extra writing prompts, based on the daily prompts from a writing group on Facebook. That way, I don’t pick the prompt, I just turn up and write.
That also sounds good. I’m not forcing myself to, I’m just aware of the option.
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With me so far? First prompt goes up tomorrow. P is for…