Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

I often wonder why I blog. In the beginning it was to write ten minutes a day, as my distant mentor Natalie Goldberg recommended, so as to improve my skills and hone my creativity.

I’ve done that for years. I’ve filled notebook upon notebook with my handwritten script; then I turned to the computer keyboard because my hands began to work more slowly while my thoughts maintained the same speed. It seemed a perfect transition.

But when I write online something happens. It begins to be about the audience instead of being about writing. It begins to be about pleasing the other, rather than pleasing the self.

Natalie Goldberg warns against the editor who resides in every writer. She says to beware of that perfectionist within who wants the writer to revise every sentence even before the next sentence is formed. And it is this perfectionist that the ten minutes a day exercise keeps at bay.

One is to write as if words didn’t matter, as if acceptance were a permanent condition, and as if every thought were viable. This isn’t true, of course, but writing as if it were frees the author to experiment, to create, and to indulge. The important thing to remember when you write online is that what those out there think isn’t as important as releasing the editor within to go on vacation.