Day 1: Just write!

30 days of writing with pleasure

Dear fellow writer,

Welcome to Day 1 of your 30-day Show Up and Write challenge!

Today, your challenge is a simple one: Watch the brief video above, then click on the 25 minute Classic Pomodoro timer below and spend 25 minutes just writing while the tomato ticks down to zero.  That’s all — and please, enjoy those 25 minutes if you can.  Life’s too short to be miserable when you’re writing!

If don’t like tomatoes, you can find a playful panoply of other colorful timers — the Purple Cow, the Green Apple, the Blue Macaron, the Brown Dog, and many more — on my YouTube channel or in the Timers section of the WriteSPACE membership library.

Thanks for showing up to write with pleasure, and I’ll see you tomorrow. 

Ngā mihi mahana (warm greetings),

Helen

Spread the joy! Please encourage your friends, colleagues, and students to join me in the WriteSPACE, a vibrant, low-cost writing community with members in 30+ countries. As a WriteSPACE member, you’ll get premium access to resources, workshops, and tools designed to help you hone your wordcraft, sharpen your style, and coax your writing gently but firmly out the door.

Books on writing by Helen Sword

Writing with Pleasure
Princeton University Press, 2023

Air & Light & Time & Space: How Successful Academics Write
Harvard University Press, 2017

Stylish Academic Writing
Harvard University Press, 2012

The Writer’s Diet: A Guide to Fit Prose
University of Chicago Press, 2016