My New Years was pretty great.  I had the chance to see all of my old college friends for 2-4 days and it was wonderful.  I love those people.  They are my second family.  We spent our time in Norway, IL, about an hour and a half outside of Chicago.  Norway, believe it or not, is the site of the first Norweigan immigrants into this country.  Part of time was spent looking around the “city” at some of the historic sites (like the gravesite of those first Norweigan’s and also the Great Agricultural Crash) and shopping at the outlet mall in Aurora.  Good times.  Oh, we also played Halo, and I actually beat Sean Allen for once in a years!  I was amazed, seriously, awestruck when I beat him.  All of us were pretty crappy, and we were playing the “Halo Maps” mod and not the original Halo, and none of us had played in years, so it really leveled the playing field and made the game a whole lot of fun.

Anyway, New Years was great.  While there I had a chance to talk to most of my friends about what’s been going on in their lives, particularly John Brit and Bekah.  John mentioned another blog of the name The Idea of the Writer by TV writer David Milch.  John talked on and on about Milch over the course of New Years, and if any of my friends are ever that excited about any one thing, it’s worth checking out.  He explained, and I’m very much simplifying this because I couldn’t convey John’s comments any justice, that Milch’s blog is all about writing the best you can and how to get there.  He said every writer needs to remove themselves from the process, they need to destroy all self-consciousness in writing.  Meaning, you can’t write for your audience, your peers, for what people will think of YOU because of YOUR writing.  You cannot even write for yourself, you must write for what is written, for who you are writing.  This was the voice of God in my ears.  Exactly!  I’ve been doing that for years!  This is particularly helpful even for me, though I do not write for a living, I do create and I must create for it’s sake alone and not for what people will think of me or to impress anyone with my creation. Well, how does one overcome, John, errm, um, or Milch?

Milch says one way is to spend 15 minutes every day writing, or creating, and then throw it away.  Write charactere exercises, write situations, write dialog, write descriptions, and throw it away.  Get out all self-consciousness there so you can free yourself to write for the product.  I need to go read more of Milch’s blog to fully understand this idea, but to start I’m going to do my best to write more.  Write just a little every day, and see if that helps motivate me to write more and more and more until I’m actually producing things that are good.  Which maybe shouldn’t be the impetus, but at least to get out some of the thoughts I have before I forget them.  And to create because I love creating.

This is the first of these 15 minutes blogs.  I’m going to categories all this work with “15 mins” to keep track of my progress and to keep myself accountable.  Will you help me too?