write

I need to be specific on this. There is no reason on earth why I couldn’t come up with three published pieces a year, one every three months, on industry trends and issues. Heck, I have been invited several times to submit pieces and with the amazing exception of one, have not following through on any of it. I need to be shamed into doing it. What’s doubly amazing to me is that a good part of my career has been spent bribing, harassing and otherwise bullying people into forking over their writing to me!

Need to get with the program!

I did nothing with this goal last week. However, while getting ready for work this morning, I found my old album of newspaper clippings from when I was in my 20s working for a regional newspaper in Virginia. I started rereading some of those old stories. As critical as I am of my own writing, it came as a surprise to realize that I was good. I was good even in my 20s with little experience of life. I had also forgotten all the notes from people in the community thanking me for capturing their stories in ways they felt were accurate and meaningful.

Rereading all that brought back one incident that I had long forgotten. I had done a story on an elderly man in my high school days. Years later, I interviewed his daughter for something else (the man had long since passed) and she remembered me and the story and said that her father had treasured it for many years. What seems like a minor newspaper clipping to us of some such community event or award is often the only opportunity that people have in their lives to be recognized and remembered

Even back then, I felt that the greatest gift I could give to another person was to witness, to listen, to observe and then to record.

Some part of me feels this is my deepest calling: to be a witness and chronicler of life, in other words, to tell the story. Hence the draw to journalism, hence the draw to history…. The passion I have felt for products I have managed have only been because of this other calling.

Anyhow, back to basics. I need to write and I need to schedule it in so I am going to set myself a goal of 20 mins a day and then add on 5 mins at a time until I am writing steadily for 2 hours a day.

Must be doable right? Then build up to an hour, then eventually, 2 hours. I know from experience that this is the most reasonable block of time to get any work accomplished….

I think the thing that I miss about writing is the power of observation. To me writing is about observing what is unique or special about life and being able to convey that in a powerful way—that rings true.

I miss that. When I was actively writing, I also lived more observantly and with that, more passionately.