This year — as I’ve mentioned — I have pledged to post once a week. This week I’m cheating and reposting blogger Vanessa Shields‘s interview of moi. (Click on her name to go there.) Vanessa is a lot like me, mom, writer, writing coach — and super enthusiastic (!!!!).
Thank you, Vanessa — I think you are my new best friend — I’m eagerly looking forward to trading books with you!
May is turning out to be my month for focusing on wellness (or, focusing on reporting to you on my wellness obsessions). And, yes, this really does have everything to do with your writing. (Just stick with me, and you’ll see.)
Because I keep a journal, I know that for an embarrassing number of years I have wanted to be a person who walks every day. I don’t know why exactly I wanted this, and it sounds a little lame to just state it bluntly like that. General good health was a reason. Because I’d heard that moving my body is necessary if I want to keep my brain. Because I knew that walking would make me happy. And I didn’t mean just walking, of course. I wanted to be a person with a real super-power walking habit. I wanted bragging rights about walking.
So I tried. If I felt inspired I walked. And I had a few good habits in place: taking the stairs, always taking a walk when I rode the ferry. In Ireland, last fall, I did a ton of walking. But, for the most part, I could not credit myself with a habit of walking.
In fact, my desire to be a person who could say, “I walk every day,” had begun to weigh on me and make me ashamed. Not walking made me feel like a failure.
Every time I thought about walking, I felt bad. And feeling crummy about it did not inspire me to walk. (And has shaming yourself about not writing led you to write?)
This year it occurred to me (finally, duh!) that maybe I could apply my “small steps” writing advice to walking. What if I set my phone timer, and walked for just five minutes a day?
This is how it’s gone for me, and how it might go for you, should you decide to finally become that person who writes every day.
Every day, I set my cell phone timer for five minutes and during that five minutes, I walked. It did not have to be pretty. It did not have to be vigorous. It didn’t even have to be outside. It just had to be deliberate, non-stop walking. A few times, in early days, I walked around the grocery store for five minutes before I shopped. A couple times I walked around the house for five minutes — at, like, 11:45 p.m. (My dog thought it was interesting. Or weird. But I did it.)
But, despite its being an embarrassingly small start, after a few weeks I found that I had begun to make excuses to walk, rather than making excuses to not walk.
Once I had proven to myself that I could walk for five minutes, no problem, I began walking somewhere–out in the neighborhood, maybe — for five minutes, then resetting the timer and walking back. Presto! Ten minutes of walking! Worth noting here, the increases were gradual. Five minutes is STILL my fall back, my “can’t fail” strategy. Everything imaginable can go awry, and I can still stand up and walk for five minutes. No special shoes, clothing, or fancy trails required.
I can’t remember if walking felt so great to begin with. For one thing, it was wet and cold when I started. But it always felt great to have walked. Gradually, I began to notice other benefits. My Fitbit gave me activity minutes (which had been mostly not happening, previously) if I walked at a fair clip. And that was rewarding and made me feel good. So getting the activity minutes became a new goal.
And walking outside, in nature, made me so happy. Even in the rain. On a really hectic day, which I seem to have a lot of, taking my dog out at 10:00 at night, or later, made both of us feel good. (And late at night there are no other dogs for him to flip out at — small win there.)
Think of your increases as an experiment. (And forgive yourself if you fall back.) I was soon walking for 15 minutes — 7.5 minutes there; 7.5 minutes back. But recently I decided there was no good reason not to do 15 there, 15 back. And I did it. So, every day for 11 days now, I’ve gotten 30 plus activity minutes.
You know how you’ve played that game on your phone 479 days in a row? You did not need to reward yourself with gold stars or lattes or anything else in order to do that. It’s the dopamine hit. You get a little tiny reward every time you complete a game.
My Fitbit rewards me with activity minutes, though it took a while for me to make the connection to my dopamine level. At some point, maybe in March, I realized that I was no longer ignoring or resisting my Fitbit. Now when it prompts me to get up from my writing and take 250 steps, I do it without thinking. If I’m driving, I pull over and find a place to walk. (I think I need a trail app.) How late will five minutes of walking make me?
Basically? My resistance to walking is gone, gone, gone. In the past I seldom ever hit 10,000 steps, even though that was my Fitbit goal. Now, I routinely hit 10,000. If I’m at 9100 steps at bedtime, I take another walk! Whoohoo!
My way of reporting was just to take a pic of the trail or beach or wherever I was walking — with my phone — and 
post it to Instagram. But now I’m reporting to you, too.
Saying, “I’ve walked for at least 5 minutes every day since January 5,” may not impress anyone else, but I get this expansive, happy feeling when I say it. That is a huge change. When I think about walking now, I get the same “lit up” sensation that walking in the hills above Sligo, Ireland, gave me back in October.
If you are a person who wants to write every day, but you’re not writing–you can apply these same steps. Yes, yes, I know that what works for me will not necessarily work for you. (That argument, my dear, is called resistance.) But, what will work for you? Have you given it a chance to work? Can you make a few experiments and see what happens?
So, as Nike used to say, Just do it. Five minutes.
I have been declaring myself a writer for … well, ages. I love meeting writers and talking about their writing with them, but among the many people I meet, two groups baffle me:
1. Writers who don’t admit that they write. (And why the heck not?)
2. People who want to write, and don’t.
If you are in the latter camp, I’d like to challenge you to write for at least five minutes every day for the next 40 days. Just 5 minutes. 40 days. Easy-peasy.
Whether or not you belong to a religious tradition that celebrates Lent, it begins today, 14 February, this year, and it’s a great time to take on this modest, 40-day challenge. “Lent” by the way is an Old English word, meaning Spring, and probably relating to “the lengthening of days.” The Greek equivalent means fortieth.
For whatever reason (I’m sure there is one), 40 is an important Biblical number. Noah’s Flood was caused by 40 days of rain. Moses and the Hebrew Tribes wandered in the desert for 40 years. Christ fasted in the wilderness for 40 days. There are other examples. And for anyone in a more secular mood, you could think of Franz Kafka’s Hunger Artist, who fasts for 40 days.
Lent is often thought to be synonymous with fasting — you’ve no doubt heard of chocolate fasts (but why would you?), shopping fasts, giving up anything generally “not good for you.” I like to think of the flip side of that, and use Lent as an opportunity to do something positive for 40 days.
What would you write?
Don’t get all intimidated by this. If you have a project that you have been meaning to start and you can start it, by all means, do that. If you can’t, just practice being present with a notebook and pen.
Write a very small list of gratitudes. Try to come up with new ones every day. (What you focus on will grow.)
Write about one person who has been on your mind or buzzing about your memory.
Take a photographer’s approach, but instead of taking a picture of the same spot in your garden or on your walk every day, write a little description of it.
Copy out a poem, not necessarily yours. (Any writing counts.)
Draft your own poem — let it be as bad as it needs to be — and then make notes and write variants of it for 40 days — just to see what happens (I’ve been doing this with a poem about my mother).
Write a letter each day.
What if you get all tied up in knots with resistance?
If five minutes are impossible, write for one minute.
Treat yourself like your employee (or child!) — I do this by setting a timer. (Look, here, Bethany, I’m setting the timer for five minutes and I expect you to write until that chime goes off!)
I’m willing to bet that there is some sort of writing that you do already — tweets or Facebook posts or emails. So try writing on your chosen itty-bitty project in that forum. Collect the results and keep them in a folder or envelope or desk drawer. Don’t look at them until the 40 days are up.
Give yourself itty bitty rewards. Big rewards get me all nervous and are weirdly counter-productive, but I will write for red X’s or shiny foil stars. And I don’t know why I’m so compulsive, but I just love an “every day” project. (Ask me how many days in a row I’ve done the dumb little game my daughter downloaded to my phone.) Doing something every day (like walking for at least 5 minutes every day since January 5!) begins to contain its own motivation and rewards.
Remind yourself, it’s just for a few minutes. It’s just for 40 days.
And, while I’m at it, if you are a closet writer (see group #1 above), why not find a way to challenge yourself to share a little bit of work every day for 40 days? You could email it or message it to a friend, and they could do the same for you.
Think of this project as not fasting (giving up anything), but as choosing joy for 40 days. And why not?
So here it is, January of the New Year. I have a few resolutions I’m working on, and someone suggested that I reframe why I set them, and that conversation got me thinking.
Then, at Writing Lab today, one of our writers admitted that she doesn’t write very much, even though she’d like to, because taking time for writing feels self-indulgent. Others chimed in. She wasn’t alone.
I kind of want to whine here. If, instead of writing, you are busy finding a cure for cancer, or homelessness, or world hunger, maybe you have a point. But, frankly, I don’t think any of us at the table today were doing anything stop-the-presses-newsworthy instead of writing.
And of course I’ve heard this from so many people over the years that it shouldn’t be jaw-dropping any longer. To illustrate, I have one friend who, in all the years I’ve known her has never been able to sustain a writing practice. It isn’t that she wouldn’t love to write; plus, she’s got the know-how — she has advanced degrees in writing. I asked her once why the heck she wasn’t writing, and she told me an amazing story about a teacher of hers who wrote despite having “crazy needy children.” Then she continued, “And I don’t want my children to go crazy.”
She was not trying to get a laugh; she was sincere. And although it seemed absolutely bizarre at the time, now that my friend has grandchildren and I’ve seen her in action for a number of years, I think I understand. She’s busy with work and keeping body and soul together, and when she does find any free time, she wants to spend it on her family.
For the record, I approve of people lavishing attention on the young’uns in their lives. But I don’t think that’s quite the problem here. You can substitute your non-negotiable here (unless it’s checking Facebook or watching Criminal Minds). At this point, I’m not even sure it’s about making the time to write (I’ve tried before to address how you might do that). So maybe, for you, like me with my New Year’s resolutions, it’s time to rethink your why.
all pictures from pexels.com
And since we’re talking about writing here, which is — at least some of the time — about making stuff up, let’s talk about re-imagining why you want to write. (And I don’t mean so that you can pull down the big bucks. I mean why it’s important to you.) To get really really clear here, the belief that writing is self-indulgent is a belief, just like the belief that being a writer = crazy offspring is a belief. Not one of those beliefs like believing in God (let’s not mess with that) or not (or that). It’s not even a belief like your political beliefs, which I think we all know by now are troublesome enough.
No, this belief is simply something that you made up at some point in your life. Maybe at that point it helped you cope with some difficulty or other. Maybe it kept you alive.
But it’s just a belief, and you can replace it. Here are a few suggestions, all of which are true for me:
There must be other good reasons to write that you can gin up, and one may very well be to make a living (kudos for you), or bringing joy to others.
Writing is a guilty pleasure and a basic need. If you want to write, that’s a good enough reason to write.