Day: January 13, 2016

I’ve heard and read a lot of people talk about the best way to develop the writer’s life. There are some basic commonalities between the talks:

1. You must write everyday
2. You must find a place where you feel comfortable writing
3. You must set aside a specific time to write
4. You must inform those in your life that this is writing time and don’t allow yourself to be interrupted.

There are more of course, but I am supremely concerned with number three for this post. I recognize that this specific one is a debatable point. A lot of great writers manage to write well without finding a set hour to do so. On the other hand, a lot of great writers do need a set time. Stephen King likes to get in his words before lunch. Others follow suit with the morning ritual and other still speak of the late evening and the witching hour as the best time to write.

I don’t have a specific time and I really don’t think time is the point at all. I think this is more about creating the habit of writing. The Ten Minute Rule is a habit of writing. I do this every day. When I began it used to be at a very specific time because that is what I needed to do in order to ensure that I would write at all. This is not because I don’t love writing. This was more a function of the fact that writing can be really hard to start/fall into especially if you have something you want to write well and are even the slightest bit nervous or concerned about completing; more still if you have nothing to say at all.

My best suggestion to writers is to indeed set a specific time. Not a lot at first. Set a manageable goal and allow that time to be sacred time, i.e. time that kids, work, etc. cannot infringe upon. To that end, I suggest the early morning. I’m writing this before the sun and the kids get up, because I know I’ll have the minutes where nobody is going to get in my way. It also is a way to start the day of right and with creativity. With that I say ‘Right on!’ and my ten minutes is about up.

Some Thoughts:

1. Ever notice how fake the political process has become? A dramaturgical analysis of the entire interplay might reveal that these people are acting not as if they are politicians, but as if they are caricatures of political characters played on TV. The synchronous standing and sitting and clapping based on party affiliation is stupid, devise, and rather juvenile. We get it, you’re part of the president’s gang or you are not. How is it you people don’t understand gang violence? I mean you live in in your gilded offices.

The officer was parked one house away from my own as I pulled up. I drove by, noticing him as I pulled into my own driveway. I knew him. Not a good sort of ‘know’ either. This was the man who’d pulled me over and basically read me the riot act (hand on sidearm) for changing lanes too close to the vehicle in front of me. Now it was my turn to approach him. See, he wasn’t the first officer I’d seen on my block recently. They’ve been on the block a lot lately–every week there is a cop sitting by. A lot of it stems from some domestic issues across from my home but the rest is pure mystery. I decided it was time to unravel the mystery.

I walked up to the officer, approaching him from the front, hands open and palms upturned. The irony of possibly being shot by a black cop for no reason whatsoever was not lost on me. He didn’t react at all to my approach, choosing to ignore me and continue the paperwork her was diligently scribbling out. I said hello and asked him what was going on. He blew me off. I asked him if there was an issue in the neighborhood and he finally said that he was writing a parking ticket and if there was an issue he’d evacuate the neighborhood.

That sat in my heart for days until I listned to a Ted talk from Melvin Russell, a former Baltimore police officer. Russell believes police have really stopped being a part of the community and become occupiers in the community. They’ve focused on the protect and forgotten the serve part of the oath. He doesn’t think it is all on the cops. He says, “we have surrendered so much of our responsibility to the police” that it creates that occupier mentality.

I feel like this is a real thing, and is a problem on both sides of the blue wall. The idea that an officer would evacuate my area is better suited for wartime Iraq than small town Maricopa. Yet, here we are.

The only question left is what do we want to do about it?