Tag: writing

Embracing the 31-Day Free Writing Challenge

~ Linda Wright

On October first, a friend started doing the 31 days of free writing challenge on her blog. Without asking what it was all about, I jumped in. All I understood was that you are supposed to write 5 minutes each day, just write anything. I haven’t written much in the past few years, except for short messages on email, and I felt rusty, stiff like a squeaky hinge. I thought it might get me back in the practice of writing for the fun of it. I have never been good at following rules. The five minute time limit is just not working for me. No matter who said it (and it was not Mark Twain) it really does take longer to write something short.

Day 10 (of 31 days of free writing)

Self-Censorship in Writing

~ Linda Wright

Once I heard a bestselling author talk about self-censorship. She said that authors often hold back from writing what is true to their story or characters because they believe they know what readers want, what people will buy.

Before a book is even printed, she warned, censorship is in play. I mused about self-censorship a lot when I was writing my memoir. I have a rather limited imagination, so I wrote about myself and my family. I wasn’t as concerned about my book sales as I was about how much of what I had previously kept private could I bear to make public. I made a lot of decisions about what to reveal and what to leave out. Some of those decisions were based on relevance to the story line. It’s the decisions that I made based on cowardice that I would name as self-censorship.

Day 2 (of 31 days of free writing)