In my writing quests, I am struggling against my inner editor. I am terrible about editing as I go, instead of letting my creativity flow and getting the words out. I see the red squigglies in Word and I practically start convulsing because I want to fix them. I’m fighting against that, at least until it’s time to edit.

The past two mornings, I typed out some early morning ramblings, and left all the typos, misspellings and mistakes. And I’m going to share them here, in all their misspelled glory.

Monday mornig ramblings

I am tired today. I woke up with a sore throat. I hope I am not getting sick today. I chugged a glass of water and then made my morning coffee. My wonderful morning coffee that gives me something to looke forward to. I love my coffee. Yum. Sadly, it’a sll gone now.

I’m sitting in my “writing chair,” which I love. It’s probably my faorite spot in the house. It’s quiet, except for the bathroom fan. I had the space heater on,, because I was freezing when I woke up. We keep the house cold to sleep better at night. Its great forsleep but hell for waking up. I am covered in a blanket and clothed in fleece pjs.

My coffee helped my sore throat a bit. The hot liquid felt really good going down my scratchy throat. It soothed it a bit. I feel a little more awake, but I’m still tired. Still struggling to get my brain moving and processing. I want to write, but cn’t focus enough to figure out what productive thing I can write. So instead I st here and wirte noting. I write crap. I hate cap but I suppose it’s better than nothing. My goal is to keep my fingers moving a bit. Not a bit, but constantly. Hoping something useful moght emerge.

I had weird dreams last nigt. The kind that leave you feeling a little unsettled when you ake up. It had some villain in it, whih may have been a cat in the last one. I have no idea. I reamember dreaming about my old kitties (who seem to turn up a lot in my dreams. Don’t know why) and trying to get them inside before they were attacked by evil cat. Before that I think villain was a man. I don’t know what he was doing and why,but he scared me and left me looking over my shoulder, waiting for the worst. I feel like I’m still shruggin that dream off.

 

Tuesday moning remablings

I feel a little more awake today. I’m not as exhausted and inner focusd as I was yesterday. I’m trying to ignore the red squigglies again, even though they call my name, desperately wanting to be fixed from mediocre to just right. Nut Iwill let them lie, including my terrible mistypes and non spaced words. It drvies e crazy, but I’m trying to teach the inner editor in me to just stop and let the creative in me just write. It’s difficult, but I know it’s something that will help my writing, and hopefully help the words to flow a bit more.

I know there’s a way to turn off the spell check but I haven’t taken the time to figure that out yet. I feel lie it would take away from my writing. I don’t want to spend thirty minutes searching in Word for that option. So I’ll just try to ignore the squigglies. I heard a friend say that she had been told to type/write with her monitor off. I think that would be great if I wasn’t typing on a laptop. Ayne I need to get some black construction paper and tape it over my monitor. Maybe that would help.

I think part of y problem with typos is that my brain is not full yawake yet. My fingers aren’t warmed up an I’m trying to type faster than my brain can think. The words get jumbled and my fingers are tripping over each other to get going. Craziness. So I end up with misspelling and weird words that are nothing what I meant tot type because my fingers were just in the wrong place. But I do love that the computer will fix a few littly etypos as I go. Thanks for reafing my mind, Word.

Writing is easy some times, the thoughts come so naturally they just flow onto the page. Other times they get stuck somethwew between my mind and yhe fingers that allow them freedom. It’s hard to know how to get them out except to just let them be. Wait, no I don’t mean leet them be. Thi s is what I mean by my brain isn’t fully awake. I’m typing what comes to mind and it makes nos esne. I mean the only hing you can do is keep trying, leep plugging away, and hope that something good comes out. It takes a little convinving but eventually they will come. Some may be bettr than others but all words are welcome.

I love writing. I love the creative release that writing is. Being someone who can’t put eloquent words together on the fly, I love the process of carefully crafting words into something beautiful. Lately, I’ve been writing more. I’ve been blogging regularly at my other blog, and have gotten serious about the idea of writing a book.

In all the craziness that is my life, I took on a 15 day writing challenge. It was a gauntlet thrown down by Jeff Goins, one of my favorite bloggers and authors. I did a review of his ebook, You Are a Writer. I thought the writing challenge would be a good follow-up.

What the heck was I thinking? I’m busy and stressed enough. Why am I doing this?

I’m doing this because in all the craziness and stress of life, writing is a release for me. Writing helps me process, communicate, vent, and show the real me to the world.

And I want to be better at it.

I love writing, but it’s difficult. I have something I want to say, but the words are stuck in my brain and I can’t seem to get them on paper or computer screen. That wall, writer’s block if you will, comes up and stops me from creating anything good.

So I took on the challenge.

We’re about a week in, and it hasn’t all been easy.

Day one: declare yourself a writer. One of the biggest things that will trip a writer up is saying that you’re an actual writer. My personal stumbling block? The word “aspiring.” Thinking I was being honest and humble, I called myself an aspiring writer. Then I realized that every time I used that word, I was telling myself I wasn’t a real writer. I’m doing my best to remove that word from my vocabulary. I’ve been working on this for a few weeks, so by the time day one rolled around, I was more comfortable with the words, “I am a writer.” I even wrote a song about it. (Have I mentioned I’m a songwriter, too?)

This challenge might not be too bad.

Then he encouraged everyone to get up two hours early to write.

Um…

I admit, I wasn’t too excited about this part. I’ve been exceptionally exhausted lately, plagued by some ailment that my doctor can’t seem to diagnose. I kind of cheated. I work later in the morning, and have been using my extra morning time to write for a while now. Just not two hours worth.

The part of the challenge that I needed to pay attention to was taking two hours to write. Not check Facebook or read blogs. Write. For two full hours.

I did it. I set that obnoxious alarm for earlier than normal, stumbled into the kitchen to fix my coffee, and then snuggled in with my laptop. I wrote for two hours.

It felt good to push through a bit. I’ve gotten used to writing until I feel l’m done, and then stopping. Sometimes, you’re not done when you’re done. I wrote voraciously for an hour or so, then it got harder. I kept writing. I feel like a lot of what I wrote was crap, but I kept writing. To get to the good stuff, you have to get the crap out of the way first.

I wrote crap for another hour. It was hard, but I felt good when I finished.

I doubt it’s going to get any easier from here.