I've thought a lot about writing, writers and the need to write this summer. I often compose things in my head: grocery lists, letters to friends, emails, blog posts, stories, etc. But often it is just in my head. The act of sitting down at the computer, recording my thoughts, or pulling out paper is what stops me from taking the composition further 100% of the time. The road block to becoming a writer.
Without recording these by, they often fly out of my head. Some stick around, possible because I've written them so often. This post is one of those that has been written and rewritten many times, and is finally being written down.
When I wrote a welcome letters to my students this summer, I shared with them one of my goals this year: to work on my writing by writing more. When I had my students share their hopes and dreams for the year, I shared mine: to write more, and learn to help them write more. So I can't put this off any longer, I need to write.
For so much of my life, writing has been for school. I wrote papers, essays, articles, and checked boxes off while completing assignments. I was great at writing papers! I lost touch with it for a bit but once I went back to school for my masters degree I again got great at writing papers, much longer papers. Once that box was checked I stopped writing again. For each of the last five summers I have been attending the Literacy Institute at the University of New Hampshire. For the first two years I was terrified because at the Literacy Institute they make you write. A lot. I'm used to it now (the terror and the writing) but it becomes what I do for a week or two in the summer. I return home and go back to my around the house projects, reading, crafting, exercising and spending time with family and friends.
While all of these things that keep me from writing are (mostly) worthwhile they do not move me towards my goal of writing more. I have the tools, I have the ideas (in my head) and I just need to schedule the time. I'm an overcommitted, overachieving, over-scheduled person, so this will take me time. For now, I start with these baby steps.
