Low Barrier to Entry

I love story. I find humans endlessly fascinating. What makes us tick. What offends one person but deeply delights another.

Over the course of my life, I’ve written journals full of ideas. A one woman show. A poem. A short story. A cabaret with a friend. And another with another friend.

None of these are complete. I get started, usually with a title surfacing pretty quickly.

I LOVE TITLES!

I’ve thought about publishing a book of titles. Then someone else can do the hard work of writing the content!

Over the past few months, a friend of mine has been encouraging me to write.

But what do I write? What form? What content?

It could all be a bit overwhelming.

I was listening to Seth Godin’s Akimbo podcast at the time, and he talks often about “shipping your work” and also writing a blog. (“If you write consistently for a month, you’ll know more about writing on day 30 than you did on Day 1,” Seth says.)

I’d never thought of writing a blog before. As a performer, I’ve always imagined sharing my ideas through the spoken word, whether it be a one-woman show, a spoken word poem, a play, or a podcast.

After several weeks of successfully not writing, I decided to start a blog … this blog.

I knew I needed a low barrier to entry.

I tend to go from idea to full-blown-production in my mind very quickly. I have an idea for a play and within minutes, I’m obsessed with how to handle a prop I’ve decided would be necessary for an idea I have within the play. Is it cost effective to have a prop that has to break every show? How will we create something that we can reuse but looks authentic to the audience?

I haven’t written one word of the play, and I’m STUCK on solving the issue of a prop.

Knowing this is my tendency, I knew I had to dive in with both feet, with very little thought to “extras” or even “the basics” in some people’s minds.

January 31, I declared to my husband that I would start my blog the next day and asked him what platform one might use for a blog.

He rattled off three or four options. I opened a tab for each on my phone as he worked to think of another option.

Nope. No more options. I was already overwhelmed. I needed to launch the next day; I didn’t have time to research multiple options, when I honestly didn’t even know what I was looking for or what to compare. I knew that if I started down that rabbit trail, I would never launch the blog.

“Just pick one, and I’ll use that one.”

“Use Medium.”

So I did.

As for content, I love haikus. I always have. They are short, sweet, and to the point. They are structured, providing me a boundary within which to create.

So I started with a month of haikus on a blogging platform I spent zero time researching. Low barriers to entry.

I was able to write several haikus in one sitting, but the idea of being responsible for actually posting them on a daily basis felt like too much, so I scheduled one week’s worth of haikus at a time. This helped me feel like a winner (“I’m ahead of the game!”) and allowed me to keep my focus on writing other, longer posts to (possibly) be posted in future months.

I created momentum for myself. I started small. I started with something easy enough for me, just as I am.

A low barrier to entry.