To Explain

I am not a writer.
I have never felt the compulsion to write, never felt the need to get out the words I have inside me, I don't have many stories to tell.
But every now and then when something sparks me off, I write. And I enjoy it. But I rarely feel that inspired.

Last year I read a book about writing and, to paraphrase badly, it said- waiting for inspiration to strike is like sitting at home and waiting to make friends, it will never happen, you just have to get out there and do it. I liked the idea of making myself write but was not that successful at following through with it. Then last December I came across the project 100 Days to Make Me a Better Person and I decided that every day for 100 days I would either write or do physical exercise. My project eventually grew and morphed and became the blog 10 Weeks of Plagiarism but I also carried on with my writing and by the end of the three months I had written almost 10,000 words, some that I was actually quite proud of.

I hugely enjoyed taking part in 100 Days for a myriad of reasons but especially the writing and I vowed to carry on but somehow I never got back into it. I think with the 100 days over and the pressure off I just lost the motivation. So this blog is an attempt to challenge myself and force myself to do a bit more. As my friend Emerson says (again paraphrasing badly) there's nothing like the threat of letting down a (probably non-existent) internet audience to force you to do something.

So every week I shall be posting a minimum of three pieces of writing, each inspired by a page in The Writer's Block, a handy three-inch-cubed book with over 700 ideas and prompts for writing. To give myself a bit of breathing room one of these posts is allowed to be an archive piece- something I wrote for 100 Days but never shared.

I should apologise in advance that some of the work will be very poor, as well as full of typos but the plan is just to do it and get it out there and hopefully the fear of public humiliation will inspire me to put in a bit more effort. So thank you invisible (and probably non-existent) internet audience for humouring my vanity project. I hope you enjoy it.