Writing 101, Day Three: Three Songs, a Trilogy

05 Jun 2014 Leave a comment

by alightningbug in Wordpress Writing 101, Writing Tags: , , ,

My take on assignment three is up. Check it out
The Daily Post Writing 101, Day Three: Three Songs, a Trilogy

The twist is to commit to a writing practice — the frequency and amount of time is up to us, but a minimum of fifteen uninterrupted minutes is recommended. I did that for assignment three — fifteen uninterrupted minutes, amazingly enough. I even tried to keep writing the entire time — keep my fingers moving — and not go back to edit anything as I wrote. Though, I admit to a bit of backspacing for an actual typo or two as I went — that’s practically reflex for me. I use a computer not paper. I let the words flow from a relatively uninterrupted stream of thought. After the fifteen minutes, I went back and edited a few more typos, punctuation, and a word or two. Nothing in the guidelines said we couldn’t do that. But I tried to keep the original stream primarily intact.

Going forward, I’m only going to commit to ten uninterrupted minutes five days a week because that’s a whole lot more likely, so I’m less likely to get frustrated when I can’t do it. I will, however, try for a longer stretch from time to time.

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First Writing 101 WordPress Assignment

03 Jun 2014 Leave a comment

by alightningbug in Wordpress Writing 101, Writing Tags: ,

Here’s my blog entry from yesterday’s assignment:
WordPress: Writing 101, just write for 20 minutes and for a twist actually publish it. I did actually publish it, but technically not until this morning, Tuesday morning. I started it on Monday, so when I published it the date is Monday. It’s interesting to know that WordPress does that. Maybe because I started it on my phone? I completed it within 24 hours of the assignment, though, so I’m counting it for now.

Of note, I’m probably going to have to write most of my entries in evenings and nights with possibly carryover to the next morning. So yeah.

That Option Not Available on Mondays

02 Jun 2014 1 Comment

by alightningbug in Mom Stuff Tags: , ,

So I’m trying a WordPress: Writing 101 thing to write every day which was my original New Year resolution this year. We know how that went. The first W101 assignment is to write for 20 minutes. Just write. I hate to say it but that option is not available on Mondays between the hours of 6:30 AM and 10:30 PM.

I mean are we talking twenty minutes all in a row or can I break that into smaller increments? Because smaller increments are a lot more likely to happen. Twenty minutes in a row of writing on a Monday? I’ll be lucky to make midnight. Oops, see that, I shot directly past midnight and slid right into Tuesday morning. So I’m going with 20 minutes within a 24 hour period of the assignment. 20 minutes not in a row, but I am trying too keep track and make this an actual 20 minutes with the last section being a large chunk of 10 whole minutes in a row. This may or may not be breaking the rules. But, generally speaking, Mondays are crazy days.

I work full time out of the home, and I’m a mom. And I’m the only driver in our house which is probably a whole ‘nother story though not nearly as interesting as it may sound. But, hey, Ray Bradbury didn’t drive either. And I remind myself of this so that I think it’s somehow cool and exotic when I’m feeling the pains of being the only driver in the house.

On Mondays, I take a late “lunch hour” from the office to pick my daughter up from Chess Club and drive her to her dance classes then drive back to work for about 1.75 hours when I turn back around and pick her up again.

Then we’ll need to manage to eat dinner which is usually going to be something quick because by dinner time I’m pretty well starving, and I don’t usually feel like cooking. Though I recently discovered these Meal Bars that have made the process a bit more tolerable. Oh, I do a lot of my writing on my phone or old iPad because I can’t always sit in front of an actual computer, but it is pretty slow going that way because I make a lot of very small typos.

And now I’ve lied because I got interrupted and these last 10 minutes are not, in fact, all in a row. But, hey, I tried.

And … time!

Editing to add:
I originally just started this post on my phone on Monday, but didn’t finish it until Tuesday morning. Once published, it appears that I published it on Monday.