Madeleine's First Post

I have been putting this off. ERT! I'm ALREADY putting this off.

My first post was supposed to be yesterday. Agnes wanted me to post first since this blog was my idea but of course she beat me to it.

I haven't read her post yet. (Is she smoking? I don't think so...) She sent me a text message saying that she had posted. One of the rules I've set for myself is that I won't allow myself to enjoy Agnes' posts each day until I have posted myself. That is supposed to provide more motivation for me to post every day and stick to the blog--and hopefully, by sticking to the blog, I will stick to my writing and fulfill my stated goal of writing five stories by the end of May 2010.

(This deny-myself-X-until-I-do-X motivational strategy is very familiar to me. It's not always successful, however. Anyway...)

Why five stories? Because that seems to be a possible goal for me if I stretch myself and work hard and stop putting things off.

Why a blog? The public shame of not holding up my end of the bargain--i.e., finishing five stories by May 2010--would be too much to bear, especially since I so want Agnes to quit smoking. Plus, perhaps--hopefully--by writing about my tortured writing process, etc., it won't be as ever-present when I sit down each day to write my stories.

I feel very self-conscious and uncomfortable writing this post even though nobody is reading this now and possibly nobody will ever read this ever, except Agnes. Plus Agnes told me NOT to edit my posts and that freaked me out and possibly paralyzed me for 24 hours. Agnes is that powerful.

Truthfully, Agnes, if you are reading, I have edited this a bit, but not as much as I wanted to. I will try not to edit in the future, because I do think that would be good for me.

Now I'm worried that Agnes' first post is better than mine. Remember, Agnes, this is NOT a competition.

So that's all for today. This did not go how I expected it to go AT ALL. I was going to write about how I never read blogs--personal blogs, anyway; I read political blogs--and how I feel really silly writing a blog, and I don't know how a blog should read, etc., etc. How I don't want anyone to know that I am writing a blog. (Hence the pseudonym.) Maybe this is a lesson, I don't know.

It is interesting how I didn't write about my writing process at all in this post and yet this post is all about my writing process.

And finally:

No writing today, though I thought about my story while riding on the train. I did revise an old story.