Ten minutes to write. Less time to read.

Hey, Natalie Goldberg, you are responsible for this blog; you and your book, Writing Down the Bones, which I read years ago. I’m still trying to practice your directive to sit somewhere and write without editing for ten minutes a day. Write as if you really had something to say and had to commit it to paper before any more time passed. Write as if commas and misspellings and pronouns didn’t matter.

Your original advice was to take pen to paper for that special ten minutes, and I did that for a couple years, filling more than one of those blank books that are popular. I wrote and wrote. It wasn’t about journaling as much as it was about sweeping the cobwebs from one’s creative core, so some selections went this way while others went that. Public issues, private thoughts, fiction, reality are all grist for the creativity mill.

Perhaps you think writing ten minutes a day on a computer is cheating. I know, I know. You can delete, copy and paste, and do all sorts of things more quickly, thus sabotaging the real purpose of the exercise. But I want to tell you that I’m being true to your advice.

I write without mulling over each word, examining each sentence, or considering the value of any given paragraph. I decide on my subject, set my timer, and let my fingers goes.

When the typewriter was invented, perhaps there were writers who thought creating an essay or a book on this new contraption wasn’t writing. And perhaps there are purists who feel that way about working on a computer. But, Natalie, we have to change with the times if we want to keep up. So I’m practicing my ten minutes online.

Maybe one of these essays will catch your eye and you’ll know I’m still true to what you taught me.