Showing up
Eighty percent of success is showing up.
–Woody Allen
I often feel like I don’t have the time I want or need to focus on my writing. That’s why it works for me to stay connected with other writers who never cease to provide pointed reminders about how I can put writing first in my life.
This week’s reminder came from Rebecca Lawton in the October issue of her newsletter Write Free. I met Lawton four years ago at a weekend writing retreat up in Philo.
Lawton suggests making a pact with yourself to show up at your desk at least three days a week, ten minutes a day. Trick yourself into starting in on your creative project du jour by saying, “It’s just ten minutes. When I’m done, I can head off to other tasks.”
I immediately took on this assignment and had marvelous results. I’d been putting off a freelance project for days, telling myself I didn’t have a enough time to give to it fully. But Saturday, I told myself to give it just 10 minutes. Amazingly that was enough. I worked longer than 10 minutes because once I got started I didn’t want to stop AND when I had to stop to deal with some necessary chores, I continued to think about the project and returned to finish it later in the day because I had indirectly been engaged with it all day.
Lawton also connected the idea of showing up to the November election. Though I hesitate to regard myself as political, I long ago came to understand what the second wave feminists promoted, that is “the personal is political.” As Carol Hanisch said in an essay dated March 1969: “One of the first things we learn in the [encounter] groups is that personal problems are political problems.” So allow me, like Lawton, to move the idea of showing up in a political direction. 
Lawton wrote: “Showing up also counts when it comes to our democratic process–something much in the minds of American voters today.” One of my favorite bloggers, Tuckova, posted this great video about showing up: Five Friends
Give yourself 5 minutes to watch the video and then spend 10 minutes on a writing project.That’s a total of 15 minutes. Surely you have that to spare.
I’d be delighted if you’d write a few sentences in the comment section about how you spent 10 minutes writing.
Patricia,
It is so amazing what 10 minutes of focused writing is. Productive time for the self and one’s work…perfect. After all these years, what a walk down memory lane to see that cover. Also, how serendipitous for me that you would write this as I have been pondering the current critical pressure on we poets to not be political or personal.
mic
Whoa Mic, I’m so amazed that you remember this cover. Sadly, I didn’t even connect with the idea of the personal as political until the late 80s. But I love this cover. I also love the subtle way in which you draw the political into your work–Gently
oh Patricia, I think it was a matter of time and place. I fell into the deep waters of those years in Olympia, WA— lived and worked at a printing collective, so was lucky to see lots of song books, posters, all kinds of art…
Isn’t it always about time and place and then about willingness? You are pulling divergent ideas and women into our now. It is part of the work that keeps social awareness and (hopefully) positive change roiling.
Also, thank you for supporting my efforts.
You go girl. Keep writing
warmly,
mic