Exhausted. – SOL Day 4

Drafted with my kids today, a different piece every period as a challenge. Preplanning page drawn from ideas displayed from my Writer’s Notebook, tracked thinking .. and then finally settling in to write with them in longhand on yellow paper.

By page 2 I wanted to give up.

I made note of this and kept going.

When we were about 5 minutes out, I invited the kids to begin thinking of additional notes where their thinking might take them and jot those ideas down before the bell rings.  As I’m understanding it, the quick draft is like a process of discovery in itself — we go in with a plan, but in this unique 1-hour writing session approach, any creative idea can emerge.  We jot it down as a writer, loyal to what our mind wants to give us and we can decide later.  This is a draft..

By my next period, I was more than ready to call it quits after 1/2 a page in.

By the next, my essay looked like an outline.

By my last period, my mind gifted me with a well-developed Introduction on an idea I ‘d been playing around with 2 months ago.  I assigned myself this piece 2 minutes before while flipping through my WNB as my kids got settled in to write.  There were a lot of musings on that one and I was surprised I’d revealed a truth about Mt. Everest, comparing the struggle on the mountain to our troubles in life.

Like me trying to stay away as I write this very moment.

Tired.. tired… My plan is to write some time earlier in the day and pre-publish, revise in the evening.

Because if I really want to do any “real” writing long-term, I’ve gotta build the stamina for it.  Today, as I wrote with my kids, I just didn’t have it.

.. exhausted.