(Time estimate: 75-90 minutes)

Your job today is to draft away. You can either continue the shitty first draft from the other day or start a new shitty first draft. Don’t put pressure on yourself to finish anything today or to make some kind of spectacular breakthrough; just show up to the page and work. As Isak Dinesen said, “Write a little every day, without hope, without despair.”

Easier said than done, you might be thinking. Fair enough. Instead of just commanding you to lower the pressure on yourself, I’ll show you one specific technique in today’s reading.

Prep:

You’ve learned a lot about your own creative process in the last eight days—what works and what doesn’t, what helps and what hinders. Take ten minutes and draft a set of “Rules & Reminders.” Think of these as instructions to yourself about how to sustain a writing practice. Think of these as a living document that will evolve as you evolve.

To give you a model (and to show you that I practice what I preach), I’ll post my latest version of “Rules & Reminders.” Every time I get a new notebook, I re-draft my reminders on the back page.

Read: 

“One-Inch Frame” by Anne Lamott

Create:

Write your “one-inch frame” at the top of a fresh page. Set your timer for five minutes longer than yesterday’s work session. Draft away.

Reflect:

Was today’s session easy or hard (and what made it feel that way)?

Think about how you approach writing now; think about your relationship with writing. How is it different than it was nine days ago?

Put an X through day eleven and log your time.