WFMAD Day 2 – rolling, rolling rolling

Wow! I’ve had incredible feedback already – thanks to everyone who checked in on Twitter, Facebook, LJ, MySpace and all the other landing zones for this blog.

Several people wrote in with suggestions for keeping those precious fifteen minutes uninterrupted. My favorite so far: "Let the dog out before you begin writing."

What are you doing to protect your WFMAD time?

(If you have no idea what I’m talking about, read yesterday’s post.)

We had a Comfort Gathering for my father in the Forest yesterday. His oldest friends and family joined us to tell stories about my parents and share the joy of their presence. I had a big photo of my mother on the mantle; her senior picture from high school. That leads me to our prompt today.

Ready….

Today’s advice:
Be clear with yourself about how much of your time is controlled by other people, and how much is really under your control.

Set…

Today’s prompt: Find a yearbook pic or school photo. It can be of you, your beloved, your kids or you can go here for inspiration (click on the image to make it larger). Choose a photo that evokes an emotional response – that gut feeling – even if you aren’t quite sure what that feeling is at first. Don’t think, just write the words that stream through your mind as you look at the photo. Write for fifteen minutes and have fun!

Scribble…Scribble….Scribble!

21 Replies to “WFMAD Day 2 – rolling, rolling rolling”

  1. I love that advice. I’ve just been thinking that I can control more of my time just by setting clear priorities, so that’s my goal for this week. 🙂 And fifteen minutes of writing is definitely a priority!

  2. Thanks for running your boot camp again this year. I’ll try my best to stick with it even though school starts back up this month. Day One down, thirty more to go. You’re an inspiration.

  3. Year Picture As Inspiration

    That’s a great idea for a quick write. I think if you even did enough of these you might start pulling together the beginnings of a novel–how could these people come together? I’m off to write!

  4. I am protecting my time by declaring, in a loud voice, “I am WORKING!” It puts hubby, pets and children on notice. If interrupted during time I want to keep for myself, I calmly look at whomever it is and tell them I’ll be with them in X minutes. Unless it’s the cat needing me to open the door to my room. She does not listen and yowls piteously and repeatedly, so she merits a quick jump up for the door.

    *realizes that the smallest creature in the house is evidently the boss of me*

  5. Thank you so much! I actually sat down and wrote for fifteen minutes. I was so afraid of the white paper before I started, I even promised myself I’d definetly start tomorrow. But somehow I ended up in front of my keyboard and did it! Oh, now I am so proud =) And I can’t wait for tomorrow. Thanks!

  6. People who know me well learned a long time ago that making demands on my time is an exercise in futility. Those who don’t know me well, and still attempt to impose their will on how I spend my time, will eventually learn the futility of such efforts the hard way. I’ve always been fiercely independent when it comes to my time and my lifestyle. I simply do as I please as it pleases me for better or for worse. I even refuse to answer the telephone or a knock at the door if I’m not feeling inclined to respond. (Of course, I’m sure things would be very different if I had a significant other or had children. Things would definitely be different if I had both!) My greatest challenge is finding sufficient discipline from within to accomplish the tasks I have given myself in an efficient manner. I painfully over-schedule myself on most days. So, even without others imposing upon my time, it’s still a stressful mad dash to check off everything on my list! So, I must protect my WFMAD time from myself!

    I had a thought of protecting my WFMAD time by doing it first thing in the morning, while enjoying the daily coffee that brews itself, quite conveniently, at my desk. However, my official work schedule is so chaotic (a reason I don’t let anyone impose upon my time outside of work) that I may be called in before I even have time to pour my first cup. That’s the one caller I’m obligated to respond to, if I wish to retain my source of income. So, I think I’m simply going to tack it on to the end of my day. Writing is often it’s own reward to me, so why not reward myself for my hard work at the end of each day with at least fifteen minutes of uninterrupted creativity? Perhaps I can even make it part of my nightly routine, the last thing I do after brushing my teeth and before crawling into bed. That’s what I did last night. It was a lovely way to end my day!

  7. Hi Laurie – I actually wrote today before the prompt went up because I had a good chunk of time. I’ve been handwriting things…I’m realizing how much the little things, like hearing the pen on the page, affect me when I’m just writing.

    And this prompt is so good I may just write again later!

    Karen Bernstein
    karen@thehpalliance.org

  8. Better late than never

    Even though it was on my Google calendar, I plumb forgot about WFMAD day 1. But that wasn’t going to stop me! I didn’t need the prompts for today, I’ve been itching to write about my great-great grandpa and how I recently found records showing he was a confederate prisoner of war, something I, nor my mother, ever knew about. I tried to convey the tingles up the spine I felt when I found the digitized copy of his handwritten letter requesting leave for “business of utmost importance.”

    Thanks for the encouragement!

    Margaret

  9. Day Two

    That was powerful. Writing about my grown children. Didn’t really know I could put words to those emotions. Thank you for that experience–it isn’t one I will forget anytime soon!

  10. LOL. I committed to fifteen minutes, knowing I had about forty-five minutes to spare before getting ready for church. It went so well that we were late to church. 🙂

    ETA: Going to write more tonight!

  11. I sat down to write my 15 minutes yesterday, wrote two paragraphs of a scene in a book I am thinking of, and fell asleep! I hope it was the swimming and not the writing that put me to sleep…
    Plan to write another (well my first complete) 15 minutes tonight.

  12. Did about 15 minutes again, and already it was easier. I’m working on a complete rewrite of my first NaNoWriMo novel, something I’ve been meaning to do for ages but just haven’t “gotten around to” (in other words, I flaked out on myself). Knowing I’ve committed to writing each day has helped me really figure out some problems I never concentrated on. I’ve cut two characters, who will instead star in my NaNoWriMo novel this year, and that leaves me more room to play with the three who are at the core of this story.

    So, thank you for giving me something to commit to–that extra bit of motivation! Now I’m off to write some more. Hopefully I’ll be in the habit of writing every day by the time university knocks me flat on my butt once again.

  13. I think this writing for 15 minutes a day was one of the inspirations for my current writing project – since January 1, I’ve been filling a page every day, no matter what the subject is. 214 days in, and I’m still going strong. No matter how tired I am, I still make myself write before I go to bed. It’s a really good way to keep myself writing, and to always force my creative forces to get flowing even if writing is the last thing on my mind. Through it, I’ve been able to make a lot of progress on my first novel, as well as experiment with other genres I’ve never wanted to try before.

    And to think that writing just 15 minutes a day for a month started it… Thank you for the inspiration.

  14. A day late but I am doing this! I have been struggling to write for even five minutes on my own and have been dying to get back into it. And for being a teacher and teaching writing, I should be doing more of my own. Thank you for sharing and I look forward to doing this much more!

  15. Two days in a row for me too! I even had a gentle reminder from Molly (you still need to write, Mommy!), and was able to gently tell my husband, when he interrupted, “Not now, just give me 15 minutes to write.”

    This writing prompt was difficult – I don’t think I’ve ever REALLY looked at my own high school yearbook picture and thought about it. Is it okay if the writing we do is more like journaling and less like “real” writing?

  16. WFMAD 2 blogged!

    Here’s my writing for today: http://www.tengrrl.com/blog/2009/08/02/wfmad-2-yearbook-picture/.

    Oddly, I found that I got focused as I wrote. There were really two different things that I meant to write about my yearbook photo, but as I wrote I realized that one of them just didn’t fit with the flow of what I was writing.

    I love my writerly self when she knows she needs to give something up for the greater good of the piece, but she can be dastardly annoying when that same impulse keeps her in the Land of Writer’s Block for hours and hours on end.

  17. Day 2 success.

    I liked the idea of a yearbook page, but that one LHA posted didn’t do a lot for me. So, I looked at one of my Jr. Hi yearbook pages – oh so helpfully posted on Facebook. It’s here. I’m the one in the upper left corner. And it brought out some good emotions. And good writing.

    Today’s stuff is again posted over at .

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