The Hundred Day Challenge
At The Creatives Workshop led by Seth Godin, someone posted a link to an interview with a writer who taught a writing technique called the 10 minute free writing.
The technique itself is very simple.
- Set a 10 minute timer
- Write for a minute
- Write for a minute
- Write for a minute
- Write for a minute
- Write for a minute
- Write for a minute.
- Write for a minute
- Write for a minute
- Write for a minute
- Stop.
Don’t edit. Don’t anything. Just let your mind run.
For the next hundred days, I want to do the ten minute daily free writing challenge. In her exercise, she suggests writing with pen on paper which I think is probably the right way to do it because it makes it easier to keep writing without the temptation to hit backspace and edit whatever it is that your mind produces.
Another thing I like about writing on paper with a pen is that at decades of practice, my brain and my hands work at roughly the same speed. Typing, on the other hand, is a much slower for me.
The other day, I took the writing speed test. My wpm is 46 but I also had 34 instances when I edited a previously written word. Even if I could have avoided say half the error, my wpm would have been a respectable 60+.
Even here, I noticed that I keep having to go and fix spellings, typos, inadvertent grammar errors. And it makes it worse when I am conscious of the fact that I am writing and reviewing my writing at the same time.
This obviously goes against the ethos of the 10-minute practice.
So, with this in mind, I will do my writing in a notebook, with a pen. Maybe I will gain something out of it.
I can already see wisps of the benefits of such a practice.
If you really turn off your higher mind, the one which censors and moderates everything you are saying and doing, the one which prevents you from shouting FIRE in a crowded theater or stops you from jumping off the balcony of a tall building even you are drawn to the railing to lean over to see for yourself how far you are from the ground, what will be left is the raw, unfiltered you.
And that has to be worth something to someone. Right?
