Time We Have in Jelly Beans: #YourTurnChallenge

Donald Murray is a famous teacher of writing. He said “Never a day without a line.” By this, he means that every day we should write something, at least a line.

On average,  we each have less than 30,000 days in our lives.

Of course, most of us couldn’t write for the first few thousand.

How will you spend your days? This video shows that once we take care of the mundane facts, we have very few days left of “free” time.

Will you go to school? Read a book? Spend it with friends or out in nature? Will you do something to make the world a better place?

What will you write?

At the end of the day, when you look back, what will you see? What will you have accomplished?

What will you have written?

I used to do a lot more blogging. And in fact one of the reasons I started blogging was because a friend and I challenged each other to write 1000 words or more a week. I found it really easy to write 1000 words or more a week as a blogger.

And then in 2011 I went back to grad school for another degree–an MA in Depth Psychology, which took me away from blogging. (But not away from writing. Lordy, lordy did I do a lot of writing: about 200 pages of writing a year for over two years.)

I have also found that as my son gets older, I want to and need to spend just as much time with him as ever. At least when he was little I could blog while he napped!

And then there’s the distraction of Facebook and Twitter, especially Twitter wine tastings.

In 2015, I want to get back to more regular blogging both here on Art Predator and on Wine Predator, and maybe on some of my other blogs as well.

I’m following the advice of Donald Murray but also the lead of Jason Calacanis (read a post about him and the death of blogging from 2008).

Jason starting blogging again in earnest on January 1. He wants to blog 1000 or so words every day, and Jason’s done it every day so far.

I’ve missed a few days so far: we had no internet in the cabin we were staying in Jan 1-4 for one thing. And then school started up again. Yesterday I have only excuses. Still I’m at 11 of 17 days.

Tomorrow, Sunday, I will post #2 of 53 interesting facts about the number 53. I will post one each Sunday for a year and a week.

Then on Monday I am joining Winnie Kao’s #YourTurnChallenge inspired by Seth Godin’s new book Your Turn (which I haven’t read yet!). Participants will commit to writing one blog post every day for seven days commencing Jan 19 and continuing through Sunday Jan 25. There’s a site where participants can post their writing as well as on their own blogs.

Winne writes that “The goal of the Your Turn Challenge is to practice shipping with a like-minded community that wants to push themselves to grow and support each other along the way.”

She says we can write about anything we want “but the post has to share a perspective – no trivial posts about your lunch! The idea is to ship something that pushes you out of your comfort zone. Each day there will be a different question prompt to help spur your creativity of what to write about.”  Read the prompts, read her whole story about what got her going, and check out the video at YourTurnChallenge.strikingly.com.

Quick guide to #YourTurnChallenge links:

Your Turn Challenge site: http://bit.ly/1KMaZ7D

Your Turn Challenge Blog: http://bit.ly/1yk00Nz

Updates during the week: http://bit.ly/1u9FV7b

Winnie on Twitter: http://bit.ly/1504td5

Chat room: http://bit.ly/1DAAQxf

Post instructions for submitting your writing: http://bit.ly/17JN6yj

Stories and recap audiostream with Winnie: http://bit.ly/14CCzmr

Google Form to submit audiostream questions: http://bit.ly/14ZR70v

Video on Your Turn Strikingly site: http://bit.ly/1KMaZ7D

Updates: http://bit.ly/1u9FV7b