27 Wild Days

Do you let the mess surrounding you get in the way of your writing time? Maybe you see the dirty dishes in the sink and say, “I should wash those first before I sit down to write.” Or maybe the dirty laundry has piled up, and you can’t seem to let it be until after you write. Sound familiar? You’re not alone; we’re all prone to distraction. It must be in the water, or more likely on social media – the distraction devil – because I can’t tell you how many of my writing peers tell me that they must do this or that before they write. I admire those writers who get up at five in the morning, grab a cup of coffee then head directly for the chair. How do they do it? What’s in their water? Really, no amount of magic water will lure you to your writing chair (sorry if you thought this is where I was going – toward the water). But I do have an antidote to the distraction devil squatting in your head, and it’s better than even the cleanest, sweetest glass of water. I’ve taken the antidote myself, and I’m still here to talk about it. And I’m still writing. Here it is: 27 Wild Days. For more than 25 years, Laurie Wagner – writing teacher, writing coach, author of 7 books, mixed-media artist, and more – has used 27 Wild Days to help others “get to the heart of what they want to write about.” So what exactly is 27 Wild Days?

With 27 Wild Days, Laurie emails interested writers a series of brief videos every day for 27 days. In each video, she shares aspects of the writing practice that has served her for more than two decades. She then reads a poem, twice, and offers a prompt from that poem as a way to help you get your pen moving. She recommends writing for 12-15 minutes (I find 15 minutes works best, since it takes me a minute or two to get into a writing groove). That’s it! Fifteen minutes. Imagine 15 minutes every day for 27 days. That’s 405 minutes (feel free to check my math). During each fifteen-minute session, if you write three pages, (for me that’s seven-by-ten inch notebook pages, which equals a total of 362 words. Yes, I counted.), by the end of the 27 days you’ll have 9,774 words: an essay, 1/8th of a memoir, 1/6th of a novella.

Of course, life does get in the way, sometimes more than we’d like, so if you miss a day of Wild Writing, you can save the video for another time. It’s happened to me: I’m currently six days behind, but those videos are still in my inbox, labeled “Unread” so I can easily find them. The completed videos I save in a separate folder in my email account, waiting to rescue me from future bouts of writer’s block.

So, if you’re feeling stuck in your writing, or don’t know what to write about next, or think you have nothing to write about (not true, by the way), or you’re like me and find it hard to close your mind’s door on the “you-can-find-a-better-word” judge, try 27 Wild Days (it’s only $49). It’s freeing. It allows you to be intuitive, to let yourself go, write words that don’t make any sense, to get a little lost, to be stupid on the page.

That’s it. Now, as Cheryl Strayed would advise: “Write like a motherfucker.”