Eye of the Tiger

Dun… dun dun dun… dun dun dun… dun dun daaaaaa!

I thought of a cool way of getting more in the practice of blogging more often, without making it a big and scary thing, while keeping it short and incredibly snappy. I can definitely find three minutes to write and three minutes to edit every day. Consequently, this is the first of a series of lighting blogs written while listening to a particular song from Spotify on shuffle.

The aim is to keep writing solidly for the length of one song, without getting suckered into editing while writing, which slows the fingers down just so much – writing without faffing, and stressing that the outcome is not polished. Sometimes, quantity needs to happen so you can practice the volume required to work towards quality.

Get content, and get it out fast.

I was just really lucky that my first song I landed on from this playlist ended up being such an epic battle song. First song was Eye of the Tiger by Survivor – well-known for inspiring bad-assery everywhere. On my journey to be an epic bad-ass: check! Butt-kicking soundtrack: Check!

Some of the lines of the song might turn into inspiration or a moment of reflection: “You change your passion for glory” – the whole point of this blog is to get back to a passion for words, to make it about the joy of writing and (sometimes) the joy of editing, reflecting the cultural practices I observe around me and figuring out how to incorporate them in my ‘get better at life’ plan. Remember, Laura, it’s not about glory, it’s about passion.

More lines from the song: “Don’t loose your grip on the dreams of the past”. This blog is a time-transcendent commitment to my 12-year-old self and an effort to be a person she would find cool. Also worth noting, that while sometimes I might aim for fancy-shmancy ways of writing, in this series, I will embrace cliches, because they allow for swiftness of expression. This is not the time or place to make the stone stony again. We will get there.

I aim to keep a laser focus for this kind of blog; “Rising up, straight to the top// got the guts and the glory” (maybe that one is misheard, but hey). I have the guts to publish definitely less than perfect writing to get going. And I refuse to stop because I am bored and frustrated. This blog genre that I am sure I did not invent, but will call for the sake of the challenge is a “Lighting Blog” – kind of like flash fiction, but without the agonising polish. This is a no kill-your-darlings zone. Just a get the words out zone. A grow as many darlings as possible zone.

So, I have challenged myself to write for the duration of one song, spend one (maybe two) song(s) tidying it up and then publish.

Every day. For a month.

Day 1.