It’s only thirty minutes; how hard can it be?
I put my youngest child down for a nap and put on an audiobook for my three older ones. I sit down at my computer and maximize my writing screen so I can’t see any distracting e-mails or notifications. I silence my phone and set the timer for 30 minutes. I’m finally ready to begin.
Now: write!
But what about?
Let’s write about how hard it is to write.
I take a bite of my late lunch in the middle of sentences. It gives me time to think. I wonder if someone has texted me. Maybe a new home has come on the market in the last 5 minutes. I should probably check my phone. I resist the temptation, but barely.
Write for 30 minutes, that’s what I’m supposed to be doing. But why? Because I want to get better at writing. And for all the writing books, courses, memberships, and conferences there are to attend, there’s really only one thing that will make you a better writer and that’s writing. You can’t buy writing experience and it won’t rub off on you from someone else. You can learn from others who use their words well. But in the end, the only way you’ll get better at writing is if you sit yourself down and actually write.
That’s what I hear anyway.
For me, I prefer to distract myself with other randomness like reading other people’s writings. Wondering what I should write about. Wondering if I should even write in the first place. Wondering why I’m wondering all these things.
It’s easy to wonder, but harder to write.
So that’s where this thirty-minute writing challenge comes in. I decided to do it on a bit of a whim, actually. I was so annoyed at myself for all my wonderings (see above) that I thought, “Well, who cares if I don’t know exactly what to write about. I just need to write!” And so here I am. Writing about how hard it is to write.
Originally, I didn’t plan to publish everything I wrote because I reasoned that I wanted to write for 30 minutes every day—not necessarily publish something every day. But there’s something about publishing it every day that makes it verrrrry obvious if you didn’t do it. Nothing like telling the internet you’re going to do something to hold your feet to the fire.
A lot of my writing these days is something I work to edit several times and polish. Sometimes I submit articles to other sites. Sometimes I ask other people to read my writing to see if it sounds ok to ears beside my own. But this writing is different.
This is more of a conversational tone. Nothing earth-shattering. I’m not trying to prove or disprove anything. I’m not attempting to come up with any sort of clever title. I’m not going for clicks or shares. I’m just trying to write. For 30 minutes. Every day.
Why? Because I want to get better at writing. Why do I want to get better at writing? Because I enjoy it. Kind of. Except for the writing part. I think I enjoy writing like I enjoy running. Most of the time, I don’t actually enjoy it. But I do it because I like certain aspects of it. I admit, there are a few times when I have just loved the actual act of writing. But mostly I like it because it makes me think more clearly. If I can’t write it down, I don’t know what I’m actually thinking. (Sometimes even if I can write it down, it still reads like a jumbled up mess of words and tangled up emotions. But at least then I have a better idea of what I’m working with in this old brain of mine.)
I write because I want to think well. I write because I want to communicate clearly. I write because I want to make you smile. Maybe even laugh. I write because I want you to think about the realities of life. I write because I want you to see how your actual day-to-day life and the Word of God intersect. I write because I want you to love and trust Jesus more than you already do.
I am a writer.
Or at least I was for the last 30 minutes. My timer just rang, so now I’m going to turn into a reader.