Challenges like this are good because they help me plow through some books that I otherwise would get bogged down in. Case in point: the Clark Ashton Smith collection I started reading a few months ago. The second story (“The Red World of Polaris”) has been a slog, and I’d been stuck on it forever, but today I finished it. The two-hour-a-day reading challenge has pushed me to read as much as I can in whatever spare moments I have, so I simply pushed myself to finish the “Polaris” story and rack up my minutes for the day.
Same goes with the Jonathan Hickman Avengers run. I’d been enjoying it, but kept getting stuck. I couldn’t get into a rhythm with it. But this challenge has helped me stay focused and keep reading.
I think that’s been my problem with book reading lately.
Focus.
Internet reading has disrupted my ability to focus. I know everyone has experienced this — we all know that our attentions have been arrested by the web — but I can really feel it as I try to read for two hours each day. I can feel my attention flagging at times, and then I get the desire to put aside the book and pick up my phone. But having the challenge gives me motivation to resist the distractions and keep reading. It’s the same when Lent rolls around and I give up the internet totally (except for work stuff); the challenge of giving something up for Lent motivates me to keep going.
These kinds of challenges seem to work (so far) when it comes to giving something up or reading or studying or practicing or whatever, but the weird thing is they don’t seem to motivate me for writing. Challenges like NaNoWriMo were often a bummer because I just couldn’t get myself to stick to them. Maybe the task was too big. But reading books for two hours each day has been pretty big, even in just these first few days, and yet I have found a way to make it work.
I guess reading is simply an easier task for me than writing. I guess with reading there is no perfectionism to deal with. I can’t really “fail” at reading unless I don’t read for my two hours each day. But with writing, even if I write for two hours, there’s the chance of failure. There’s the chance that what I write will be shitty. I think this is what makes writing challenges too hard for me. Fear of doing it badly. I can definitely write for many hours in a day; my writer’s notebook is proof of that. But the writer’s notebook is private, it’s just me mucking around. It’s not meant to “be” anything other than a place to experiment. I can write pages upon pages in my notebook each day without a second thought. There’s no real “failure” with the notebook because there are no expectations.
But writing a story, or an essay, or even a blog post like this means there are expectations. There is good and there is bad. And when I start to think of my expectations for a story or essay or blog post, then I start to freeze up. Then there’s a chance for failure. Fear rears its ugly head.
Giving up the internet for Lent isn’t really something I can do “badly.” I either stay off the internet or I don’t, so as long as I stay off, I win. Same for my two-hour reading challenge. As long as I read for the requisite amount of time, I can’t do it badly.
But writing for an audience can turn out badly. It can suck. Somehow I need to get over these fears and do a writing challenge.
I suppose I could do a time-related challenge, i.e.: sit at my computer for two hours with my manuscript in front of me. Or I could do a word count challenge that’s manageable (like 500 words per day). Or a story-per-day challenge. I was doing a word count challenge earlier in the year, but as life stuff happened, I fell off the wagon and gave up. And by “life stuff” I don’t mean anything major; just the normal ups and downs of life with kids and work and responsibilities.
I think the best kind of writing challenge for me is to have a “writing time” and sit down at that time every day. Even if I don’t get very many words written, there’s something about the regularity of the appointment that works. All I have to do to win the challenge is sit down at my desk at the appointed time.
Maybe I can modify/combine the writing time challenge with the time-amount challenge. Once per day — any time that presents itself during my hectic day — I sit down at my desk with my WIP open and try to write for fifteen minutes. Set the timer, sit for fifteen. If writing happens, great. If no writing happens, I still meet the challenge for that day.
It’s worth a shot.
I thought that by making my American Literature syllabus into a zine, I would be saving something. Saving my desire to teach. Saving my subversive stance against traditional education. Saving my students from their mistaken ideas about learning and literature.
