Writing Accountability #TBIthursday

Yesterday I participated in a virtual “write-in” with 9 other writers. I found it on meetup.com and it happened on Zoom for one hour. It was organized by a local group and happens weekly for exactly one hour where the overall goal was to just be present and write.

I had a few objectives going into it. I would like to tell you about my objectives and if they were met in this writing update for #TBIthursday.

A few weeks ago I attended another free session on writing held on Zoom that I found on meetup.com. You can keyword search by interests and location to find events happening that would interest you (on meetup.com). I am interested in writing groups so that is the first thing I searched. The other session I attended was a memoirist giving advice on writing memoir. I decided I wanted to find more free groups to attend virtually in order to inspire me to write. That’s when I found this group. They meet weekly and I do plan to join them as often as I can. I decided to plan ahead of time what I was going to write so that the hour writing session was dedicated purely to writing. I shared a few blogs ago that I am using a drawing journal and a visual outline/mind map to help me organize my thoughts and generate content for my memoir. So I chose one of those sections and wrote on it for the hour.

Objectives I had for the Write-In

Objectives Met?

“Establish an easy pattern for writing the sections of my visual outline.”—> Yes! I am very pleased with how I came up with writing each section of the outline separately. I will eventually need to spend time connecting all the parts together but that should be a natural fit for the editing process.
“Establish a clear and consistent voice.”—> This was really more “maintain” a clear and consistent voice since I am further along in my writing than just “establishing” a voice and tone. However, in the section I wrote during this time it was easy to maintain the established voice because I am writing in a very natural voice.
“Establish a pattern for these virtual write-ins so each one I attend produces improved results.”—> I think by planning ahead of time what I was going to write and choosing one section of my visual outline it made it so it was easy for me to fit my writing into this hour session.
“Flesh out one of the ‘arms’ of my visual outline.”—> I wrote on one of the sections of the outline called “Core Issue #2” and I wrote about my hearing loss after TBI.
“Meet other writers.”—> This wasn’t really what this write-in was about. We didn’t talk to each other because the focus was on producing writing. I will have to look for another group where I can meet and talk with other writers.

What I learned

This format works really well for me. I had attended physical write-ins before my TBI and I wasn’t sure if now with the TBI I could be focused for an extended period of time and achieve meaningful results. I was pleased to find out that the write-in format works almost better post-TBI because I am so driven to tell my story. One thing I wasted a few minutes figuring out was that I need to be comfortable and I am faster typing on my iPad. I started out the session at my desk writing on my laptop but I soon realized that I needed to switch to my iPad and sitting in a comfortable chair. I set my laptop up on a table by the comfortable chair in my bedroom and positioned it so the webcam/Zoom camera was on me as I sat in my recliner and wrote on my iPad. I used to be a fast typist before the accident but now I am not and have gotten faster at typing on my iPad. Now I know that the next write-in needs to happen on my iPad in a comfortable chair. I won’t be able to participate in next week’s write-in but I am excited to make it a weekly thing.

I will need to continue writing the section I started during the write-in, but I pretty much knew I wouldn’t finish the section in this hour period. Hopefully the more often I do events like this I will start to be able to produce much more content. I am excited to use the rest of this month and next month generating content so I can get to editing during this November’s NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month). This is perhaps an ambitious goal but I really want to get to a point where I finish this gosh darn thing!!

Writing By Laura

Writing My Brain Injury Story.