I shared the 10 minute rule with some students today. Not the blog itself (as that would be egotistical) but the idea of it. These are all novel writing students who struggle with the words. The words don’t come fast enough. the words come too fast. There is no time to record them. There is no time to summon the writing. There is no time to write.
I asked them to take 10 minutes minimum out of each day and write. I know that for some this will be a challenge, as it was for me. For others it will be an opportunity to solidify that wealth of talent that lives within them. A chance to open the vault doors at let slip the tide of fiction. Or non fiction as the case may be.
I am struck by the abundance of words within them. I am struck by this as I struggle with the production of my own words yet again. As the walls of deadline loom before me and the 20th looks down with dark eyes I ask, How can I get the words? How indeed?
Perhaps I should stop self-sabotaging. I should put mind to work ahead of habit and distraction and call forth the working thoughts of a man who knows his craft and his skill and his depth of person and character before I, infinitely smaller than he, forget who he is, which is me, which is meant to be he again.
I am of course rambling incoherently. Sometimes such things are necessary to get the junk out before the goodness can flow freely. That and pancakes do a good writer make.