The First Fifteen Minutes

Confession: The name of the blog was going to be "Ten Minutes," but all the relevant domains were taken.

Reading:

• On Writing, by Stephen King

Writing:

• "Illuminated"

I unplugged my television today. I debated about whether or not to start the post that way, but I decided that trite, overused, clichéd declarations of the resolution to write (goddammit!) get that way for a reason. And besides, Stephen King told me to, and you don't want to fuck with him.

When enough people tell you something is good, you start to listen. (This is a lie, because I still don't watch American Idol.) And just before my birthday, someone once again recommended that I read Stephen King's On Writing. I mention my birthday because I got a Borders gift card from my parents as a present, which provide the means for my purchase. (And, to be fair, because I just turned thirty, a fact of which I am perversely proud.)

One hundred years ago, people kept diaries, which they didn't want anyone to read. Now they keep blogs, which they want everyone to read. Our culture is a funny thing.

It took a few weeks to get through the autobiographical bits at the beginning to the meat of the book, big chunks of wisdom masquerading as common sense. I was interested to see how much parts of it described me, and how much didn't. I've always been a voracious reader, and I love getting caught up in the joy of creation. I've also felt the cooling of emotion when I've gotten bogged down in a story. But lately I've been held back by my own habits, which most consist of television viewing, dinner, and sleep.

I chose to give up, for a week, the easiest of those three. (Why not more than a week? Because the season finale of LOST is next Thursday, and I'm not made of fucking granite!) Instead, I'm going to fall in love with reading and writing all over again. That's my fifteen minutes a day. (Spelled 5i5teen out of necessity.)

I'm going to lay down the ground rules, so I'll know what to break later:

• No finished product. This is a place to work on composition, not a showcase for shiny new stories.
  
• No revision. Once it's posted, it's posted. End of story. (Huh, interesting choice of words.) Not even for spelling. Shine it up on your own time.
  
• No lies. No lying to myself, or my currently non-existent readership.
• No copy and paste. I've got to write it here, in the wysiwyg window, or at the very least in an email window. No fair copying a swath of story and claiming it's new.
• No slacking. This is for every day. Every single goddamn day. What, you can't get to a keyboard to say you're sick? Pussy. Just not feeling it? Lazy fuck. In a Tibetan monastery? Bring your cell phone and text that bitch.
• No restrictions. Not on language, or topic, or anything.

(Better switch on the "adult" filter, so I can say "fuck" without hurting the minds of schoolchildren, who are more accustomed to hearing the word than seeing it in print.)

So that's the plan. Enjoy the peek inside my head.