Writing 101, Day One: Unlock the Mind

Writing 101, Day One: Unlock the Mind– To get started, let’s loosen up. Let’s unlock the mind. Today, take twenty minutes to free write. And don’t think about what you’ll write. Just write.

 

You write because you have an idea in your mind that feels so genuine, so important, so true. And yet, by the time this idea passes through the different filters of your mind, and into your hand, and onto the page or computer screen — it becomes distorted, and it’s been diminished. The writing you end up with is an approximation, if you’re lucky, of whatever it was you really wanted to say.

– Author Khaled Hosseini, “How to Write,” the Atlantic

 

I am sitting in front of the computer , my fingers itching to press the keyboard and start writing but my mind says’ what new you will write? everyone has written about almost every topic and that too so beautifully, do you think you can write better than them?’

This happens daily and what do I do? I just move on to read other blogs, story challenges, or whatever is interesting there. Reading wonderful blogs gives me immense pleasure but at the same time, it makes me nervous. My self-esteem takes a dip. One more day passes without me even trying.

In fact, I procrastinate writing on one pretext or another, as I have more important tasks to complete or there is household work to be done.

Since childhood writing, even in my mother tongue was my minus point. It’s not that ideas were not there but to express them was very difficult for me. Essay writing was the most difficult job for me. I could never tell stories to my children. I made up for this by reading stories to them.

Then why I started writing a blog one may ask. Actually, it was my daughter who not only insisted to open a blog decorated it for me. She told me to write anything that comes to my mind. At first, I found it interesting. I tried my hand at many things, Haiku, short poems, and short stories but the was very exhausting for me so I ended up publishing photographs in photo challenges. It was easy. Now that is also becoming difficult as I am unable to go out and take new photographs.

I am always afraid that everyone will laugh at my writing. I have a very limited stock of vocabulary, my English is not up to the mark, all these thoughts make me nervous. Though there are my friends who always try to encourage me and  I am very much thankful to them.

Now I have joined ‘Writing 101, I hope this will help me to reach for my goal.

 

( Yey. I have written for 20 minutes whatever came to my mind.)