Your Own Personal Writing Process (Mysti)

In order to complete this assignment this semester, you have to carve out time and space to actually get the work done of putting words on a page. When and where are you finding time to do this? What are you having to give up in order to get this job done? Where do you write, when do you write? What helps you become more productive--and what hinders your progress?

As for me, I like to write in the late afternoon (between 3 and 5) at the Starbucks across from Central Mall. I always sit outside, even if it is 99 degrees--sipping a hot grande breve latte in the meager shade (all the umbrellas have apparently blown away). Here I hand write on a yellow legal pad with a blue extra-fine Pilot Precise V5 rolling ball pen. When I finish the bottom of a third page, I generally quit writing, as my motto (borrowed from Julia Cameron in her book The Right to Write) is "Three pages per day . . . three pages per day." Sometimes I scribble around the edges of the page since I have met my quota but have not found a resting place between what I wrote and what it is I am trying to say. (Like today, for example!)

Sometimes these ramblings seem like diary entries, sometimes they become the first step of conceptualizing my goals and dreams. Occasionally they turn into essays or poems, letters or e-mails that I end up typing up at a later date. If nothing else, they exist as a measure of my mood and concerns, and I always, ALWAYS feel better when I get up from the table after having written my pages. In fact, I feel pretty darn good while I am writing--the very act of allowing myself the freedom to "say what I really want to say" is a gift to me, helping me discover who I am, where I've been, and where I'd like to be. Time slips away when I am writing while sipping my latte--and I don't notice the heat, the noise from the street, the cheezie piped in music. I am "in the zone" as an athlete might say--and when I am done, I feel complete.