I’ve been participating in Christina Katz's 21 Moments
Writing Challenge for a few months now. It’s simply an example of
good writing, received via email each morning, as inspiration and a gentle
reminder to write.
Participants are to write at least 200 words per day, for 21 days of
the month. You may use the email examples as prompts, or write whatever you
wish.
It isn’t homework. You don’t turn it in.
At the end of each month, you
may submit one of your writing “moments” that you have edited and polished, and
if Christina chooses it as an excellent example, you receive the next round of
21 Moments at no charge.
I see it as a little kick in the pants to remind me to put
the words to paper.
After participating in 21 Moments for a while, I heard about
the Ultimate Blog Challenge, and had to wonder why, if I can write something
every day, that I can’t seem to do anything with the old blog. So I signed up.
How hard could it be?
By day three I was at a loss. This is not playing around
with a few words every day that you might review and make something good from
later, and nobody will ever know if you don’t.
This is start it and finish it
and edit it and post it for complete strangers, who are probably better writers
and more successful and better than you in every possible way, to read and
judge. Yeah, that.
No pressure.
Christina’s little kick in the pants did not prepare me for
this UBC ass kicking. I’m still glad I did it, anyway. It’s got me back in the blogging habit, and has helped with the procrastination due to perfectionism problem.
Sometimes you just have to take a breath and hit the Publish button.
Thank goodness there are also Edit and Delete buttons.
