the one thing

Writing. What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?

What do I do each day that doesn’t contribute to my writing? Laundry, cooking, stacking wood, letting the effing dog in and out about seventeen times an hour. I look longingly at the laptop as I pass it by on my way to put away yet another pile of clothes (meanwhile, the washing machine drones on), and I think about the characters in my story-in-progress, two of whom have been suspended in mid-conversation, in a drafty living room, for over two weeks.

The “thing” I do each day that doesn’t contribute to my writing is the inadvertent avoidance of writing. The privileging of the mundane over the creative. And this is so often unsatisfying, and on so many levels. Rarely, if ever, do I put the last item of clothing away with the self-satisfied smile of a job well-done. Once in a while I will admire my freshly vacuumed carpets, but this only adds to my irritation at the dog, who sees a clean carpet as an invitation to leave snippets of black fur (or worse).

Today, when I happened upon this Re-verb challenge (a creative prompt and a promise to write a blog entry every day for the month of December—thanks, Elizabeth Howard), I was excited, thinking, “This is just the kick in the tush I need.” And then I spent a good portion of my evening (after the lasagna had been eaten and the dishes put away) checking in on Facebook to see what kinds of exciting endeavors my creative friends were embarking upon. “Cool,” I would think. “Wish I had the time for that.”

This post is part of a daily writing project called #reverb10. Find out more & join in this creative exercise at http://www.reverb10.com/.