Motivation

I think one of the more difficult things for me to do is to start writing. I’ll do a bang up job collecting information, scanning my Moleskin, grabbing books for background information – but I’ll still find myself putting off the actual writing portion of the act of writing.

I say this because I’ve been meaning to start putting together a short memoir on my trip to the Boundary Waters last summer. Some people take pictures when they go on vacation, and we are fond of the photography as much as the next person. But pictures leave out the feelings, the random people, the smells, and the tastes. For this reason, I like to write about our vacations rather than try to remember it based solely on photographs.

In this case, however, it’s been a year. I haven’t done anything more than grab a book and page through it. What is my problem? Where is my motivation?

Starting today, I’m making a promise to myself, and to you the faithful reader, that I will write an introduction to my essay. It will be finished before I go on vacation next week, simply for the fact that I plan on throwing some words together in the car, at the campsite, and wherever I can during vacation and quite possibly could have a first draft finished by the middle of August.

I plan on doing this now because I also plan on writing about the trip I’ll be on: heading to Idaho to visit my grandparents, tooling around with friends in the Black Hills, and revisiting Jackson, Wyoming, a town where I spent practically every summer for six years.

I can’t bear to have two stories rolling around in my head, so I’ve got to act now. I’ve got to keep reminding myself that I was only in the Boundary Waters for three nights, and it can’t possibly take very long to hammer something out to remember the trip by. You’ll have to forgive me if my blog-posting is shorter, or if it thins out a bit in the upcoming weeks. I’ll just be transferring my energy to other pursuits, if only for a month or so.

If you see me, remind me. Ask me how the Boundary Waters story is coming along. Slap me in the face if I say, “I haven’t worked on it yet.”

It’s the least you could do to help me out.