write a little everyday

I was checking out this guys blog about being an autodidact (self learner) and the entry of the day was about making a habit out of writing (which I found topical ;-).

One of the warm up exercises suggested was something called ‘freewriting’ or just writing a stream of conciousness with little thought to the actual result just the use of a set of ideas and the basic committement to keep writing no matter what. One piece of advice given within this context was that if you ran out of ideas it was acceptable to just keep writing/typing the same word again and again and again and again until you broke free of the loop with something else to write about. Having performed this exercise you can then move on to the next stage which he termed

‘Pre writing’ where you look back over some of your free writing exercises and attempt to cluster or extract some sensible themes for futher development.

Anyway just thought I’d practice what I preech (at least some of the time ;-).

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I was listening to a podcast recently where the fellow stated quite simply. “If you are reading everyday … you should be writing everyday …”.

I guess if someone has told you something (you read something) you should be (at the very least) be able to (and encouraged too) restate what they have told you in your own words.

Often having done this I find that I want to add additional thoughts and then suddenly I’m writing fluidly and having a lot of fun doing it.

One trick I have that helps me with this goal is having a recuring todo item in my outlook list ‘Blog yesterdays events’.

Every morning (at the very least) I try to write down simply the events of yesterday eg ‘Had lunch with Rob’ which like the above example often prompts more expansive reflections.

Of course then there’s writing comments on 43 thigns as well ;-)