Reverb10: Writing

I'm taking inspiration from a 31-day blogging challenge called reverb10, responding to writing prompts that are designed to allow bloggers to reflect on 2010 and to send out reverberations for 2011. You can find out more about it here.

Day 2 – Writing. What do you do each day that doesn’t contribute to your writing — and can you eliminate it?

What keeps me from transferring the lines in ink to digital prose?

What makes me hesitate, keeping me from clicking 'Publish'?
What keeps me from writing?

–  The whispers of doubt, imagined taunts, “You think you're a writer?”  Really, shouldn't that be enough?
–  The worry that the pain and weight of grief is too much to share.
–  Time. It takes so long to edit and craft and re-craft. The wordsmithing takes so terribly long.

What else? I mean, really? What doesn't contribute to your writing?

–  Wondering about water-miscible oil paints and reading up on them, comparing brands.

–  Same for field easels and thumb boxes and pochades.

–  Quilting and sewing projects that people post, pretty textures and patterns.

–  Lovely photos on Flickr

–  Lovely, haunting, inspiring, uplifting words

The internet.

I'm so inspired and engaged and connected and curious and investigative and …

… so distracted.

p.s. Special thanks to Debbie and Patti, whose posts have inspired me to sit for a good long while, away from the Internet, to write.