Meeting My Goal With a Dangerous Writing Prompt

The reasons I have this blog are to allow me a place to reflect and to help keep me more accountable for what I want to do.

By having a blog, I force myself to think about what I'm doing (mostly in my classroom). It gives me the opportunity - in a more formal way - to think about what's going well, what's not going so well, and what I'd like to try.

I also feel the blog makes me more accountable for my own goals.  If I set out a goal in a blog post, then I am declaring it to the world. Sharing the goal makes it more real and makes it more pressing to achieve that goal.  Sure, few, if any, people may read the blog posts, but the internet is live, public and forever.  This puts my goals out for everyone to see. Instead of keeping them private and being accountable to only myself, I have the sense that others could be looking over my shoulder, checking in on me.

So, as a result of this reflection, I’m recommitting myself to this blog.  This time, I’m giving myself a specific schedule. Expect a new post every Tuesday (there’s that goal made public). Today is Tuesday; so far, so good.

I also know that I can often have writer’s block, not knowing what to reflect upon or share. Consequently, I’m giving myself permission to be brief - a few paragraphs will be okay.  Also, to help break any blocks, I will use The Most Dangerous Writing Prompts. Game-like, the site has the writer keep working for a certain amount of time. If no progress is made after a certain interval, the program starts warning the writer, then the screen turns red, and you can no longer type (It does allow you to save work even if not finished.).

Not knowing what I would write for this post, I used The Most Dangerous Writing Prompts, set to three minutes. (I found it was a low expectation.)  I produced a few paragraphs in that time, then moved over to a word processor to finish up. I envision using the site with my students for activities like warm-ups or brain dumps in order to build their writing stamina and writing readiness. I am hopeful that they can see it as a tool that encourages improvement. 

I am optimistic that the schedule and the site will make my blogging goal manageable and attainable.

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If you have strategies to be a consistent blogger or to help develop students’ writing stamina, or, if this post has generated some thoughts of your own, please share in the comments. I would appreciate hearing from you.