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An Impromptu Writing Challenge

Writer's picture: Lisa ColburnLisa Colburn


I am someone who likes to feel productive, which is probably why I’ll never really retire. This makes my current aimlessness feel uncomfortable, like a mild unreachable itch. I don’t know what I want to focus on with my writing this year: Personal essays? Poetry? Op-eds? A children’s picture book? The novel that has languished in the back of my mind for 30 years, and of which I have written 20 mediocre pages? Some kind of memoir book-length project (but what)? Another anthology?

 

While I didn’t love every minute of the 9 months I worked on Unfolding: A Market Street Writers Anthology, I loved at least 90 percent of them. The anthology was in my wheelhouse. Before I founded Market Street Writers and began leading Amherst Writers & Artists (AWA) workshops, I had a 20-year career as an editor and managing editor, including four years at the helm of a magazine (Congregations, published by the Alban Institute). I know how to manage a big project with lots of moving parts, how to work with writers to shape their work, and how to take the whole thing across the finish line. I did have a learning curve with regard to self-publishing, but that was a fresh challenge that I welcomed.

 

Most of all, it was satisfying to know—every time I sat down at my desk—what I would be working on that day. I had my end goal in mind, a self-imposed deadline (which I missed, but only by a few months), and in the end, a product I am proud of. I enjoyed the book launch party/reading at the Birch Tree Bookstore in Leesburg, as well as the online reading. But truly, what has stayed with me is that I loved the process of working on the anthology.

 

Flashes of Happiness vs. Joy

When I had a couple of poems published in the Peregrine literary journal a few years ago, I noticed that I had a flash of happiness when they emailed me to say they were accepting the poems. Then another when I received my copy of the journal in the mail and saw my poems in print. Then another when I participated in the online reading, and another when friends asked me to read my poems aloud to them in the lobby of the storied Hotel Chelsea in New York. And that was it: four flashes. I’m grateful to Peregrine for publishing my poems, but that would have been an awful lot of work—writing, revising, revising again, revising yet again, figuring out where to submit, submitting again and again—if I hadn’t also loved the process of writing and revising them in the first place.

 

The church I used to attend hosts a burning bowl ceremony around the new year, where participants are invited to write what they wish to release on slips of paper that will be burned, and then write a letter to God or their higher selves about what they wish for in the coming year. One of my intentions was always the same: to be a productive working writer. What I meant by that was to purposefully and joyfully show up to my writing with regularity and do the work. My emphasis wasn’t so much on publication as on the lived experience of being a writer, of taking this life purpose of mine seriously by giving it time.

 

For me, this looks like leading writing workshops (in which I also write), hosting and participating in a twice-weekly writers’ Zoom room, being in a book club with other writers, taking workshops and classes, reading writing craft books and magazines, and—most of all—writing and revising. (And later, on occasion, submitting work.) It’s the writing part that has me stumped for the moment as I cast about for a project.

 

What’s Next

So what do I do now? Well, I am writing this during my writers’ Zoom room, at the beginning of which I announced to everyone that I didn’t know what I was going to work on. As I remind people in my AWA workshops, you can begin your writing by saying, “I don’t know what to write.” Now I have reminded myself! I imagine that, in sharing where I am with my writing, a few of you may be able to relate. And that makes us all feel less alone.

 

The point is to write something—anything—and see where it takes you. While I am in the discomfort of my flailing-around (aka creative) stage, I am making a commitment to myself to spend time with my writing daily for the next three weeks, until February 11. This could be writing in response to a prompt, revising a poem (which I also did this morning), sketching out the structure of an essay, drafting an op-ed, sifting through notebooks to find material to expand, etc. But I will do it, and I will report back to you how it went.

 

Would you care to join me? Let me know!

 

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2 Comments


Di Read
Di Read
Jan 24

Lisa, thanks for this post! I read it with interest, enjoying my memories of you as you began your career as an editor and progressed through all the stages to the present.


You once told me that you spent a month touring Australia, including the Outback, when you were barely in your twenties. You said that that month changed you, your whole outlook, and attitude toward life. When you returned to the USA, your friends had to actively intervene to keep you from selling your car and all your other possessions so you could live a simpler, more thoughtful life.


What happened in the Outback to make you feel that way? And have you sometimes regretted not following the simple,…


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Diana, thank you for your kind words and the powerful writing prompt! That was definitely a transformative time, and one worth exploring in my 21-day challenge. I appreciate the reminder. 😊

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© 2025 by Lisa Kinney Colburn

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