2017 Live Writing Marathon 3 – Blocked

Here we are – Saturday afternoon and I have not written a word yet today. I am stuck. Now, before I tempt you to think that this is writer’s block: that’s a concept I don’t believe in, so it can’t be that.

I had some non-writing jobs to do this morning, so I didn’t find the space to get to the laptop until early afternoon, but I have been avoiding the writing for nearly 2 hours. It’s time to check in and see what is going on, and to draw down some of the learning points from the first Writing Marathon I completed back in 2015.

First, let’s check what is happening. I did a short meditation earlier and the following issues surfaced:

• At the beginning of this process I had two possible manuscripts to work on. Yesterday I spent most of the day focused on “A Journey of Wonder”. Overnight I have had doubts – did I go for the wrong one? I need to dismiss these thoughts. There is no wrong choice here – I just need to get on with it. If it means so much, I could spend some time on the other manuscript later today or early tomorrow.
• The sections I have sketched out for “A Journey of Wonder” have become a bit skewed. I was intending this book to be a collection of the people who have been big influences on my thinking and my ways of working. The sections I wrote yesterday, and the names I added to the list to write about, were predominantly musicians. That feels helpful, but I have been worrying that I have missed out a whole lot influences. I am settling this issue at the moment by noting that music and musicians are a huge influence on everything I do, so just run with it.

I thought it would also be useful to remind myself of the key learnings from 2015:

• starting each day with a short meditation really helps me to get started.
• having a structure ready in advance so that I am sitting down with a job to do, rather than a blank page is a big help.
• the process has shown me that I have the ability to focus far more than I thought I did.
• doing this over three (four in this case) days builds mettle, as each day goes I gain in confidence.
• the power of the visual post-it note technique for helping me to build a structure for the book was remarkable. It really helped me to see what the chapters could be and how they fit together.
• it is also remarkable how much the ideas come together in the actual writing process itself. Whilst writing, new examples occur and connections between sections become more obvious.

Those notes are really helpful to get me focused and sharpened. I will pull together a timetable now, and report back later in the day. All for the sake of #writingoutloud.

Also published on Medium.