Writing for a Public

Writing those two last posts made a big difference in how I'm working with my manuscript.  The very act of writing about my problems for an audience helped me to articulate them far more clearly than I was articulating them to myself, even in my writing journal. I've written quite a lot in the past couple of days, and it is text that I feel much more confident about, in a voice that I think will work.  The idea that someone (anyone!) is reading my ideas and my prose kept me honest, in a way.

There is an article in this week's "Week in Review" in The New York Times about a reporter (Brian Stelter) who has lost almost 75 lbs by tweeting about it.  At first, his goal was 25 lbs in 25 weeks, and then he went for another 25 when he reached it, and another 25 after that (he says he'll get to 75 on September 3 -- the day the original 25 weeks was up).  He writes that he wanted an "audience cheering him on." Eventually, his audience was comprised of 600 people -- most of whom he had not known before.  He described one such woman as his "biggest fan," and when he finally did speak to her as he prepared the article, it came out that she had also lost 50 lbs. His success IS inspiring.

He also wanted the fact of having to make his every bite public to help keep him honest.  "Eat and tweet."  It's embarrassing to have to admit to an audience that you just ate three jelly doughnuts and a milkshake, so you don't do eat them.  He found that it didn't quite work that way all the time (and he wasn't always honest) -- but 'fessing up to his transgressions made him less likely to transgress again (how very Catholic!).  The pressure of the crowd...

I was especially interested in this article because I, too, have been trying to (and succeeding at) losing weight these past few months. I'm truly terrible about remembering my own weight and I can't remember where I started, but I think I've lost about 25 lbs -- I've had to buy clothing several sizes smaller.  There's nothing like a scary visit with your cardiologist to make you mend your ways! I haven't done it by tweeting about it, but my method, such as it is, also involves being honest.  I began using an iPhone app (MyCal Calorie and Nutrition Tracker, $.99) to track my daily food intake back in late April.  I eventually switched to an iPad app called Calorie Counter for FatSecret (free!), but the principle is the same:  you enter what you ate into the app, and it keeps track of the calories, fat content, fiber, sodium for you.  In order to know how much you've eaten, you have to measure or weigh pretty much everything.  No one but me reads my "food diary," but I have been quite honest about what goes in there, though to be really honest, I have to admit that I didn't keep track on nights when I went out in Barcelona, or when I've been at a potluck full of yummy food, or when I've invited people over for dinner... It would be difficult to do so, given that I don't often don't know what went into the food, but I also know that I surely ended up above my self-imposed limit and I just don't want to go there too spectacularly.  The "plenary sessions" in Barcelona certainly wouldn't have helped!

My success with this method of losing weight is in fact identical to that described on the "Well" blog in The New York Times on July 16, 2010. The app helps me make better choices, because I often enter a meal before I eat it, modifying my overall menu so as to keep on track.  The night I eat little more than a big tomato salad (my garden is producing ginormous tomatoes and it's hard to keep up), I can have a (carefully measured portion of) ice cream, for instance.  When I've made a scrumptious pasta using olive oil and cheese, I can't.  For me, it works.  I heard about a woman who claimed this method stopped her from "magical thinking" ("it's only a little cookie and doesn't really count...") and that also sounds on target. YMMV, of course.

So how is all this related to writing and this blog? It's partly about the importance of being honest about your progress, though unlike Brian Stelter, I don't really feel I need the audience for that.  When I was in the push to finish my dissertation, I was brutally honest with myself in my writing journal about how many words I had written on any given day.  That worked.  I won't be writing here about how many words I've written (or tweeting it!), though I think I might try to keep track again, to keep myself honest with myself.  But perhaps it's also being honest in a more abstract manner:  acknowledging the problems I'm having and trying to write through them.  My progress this week seems to indicate that it may have worked.  It certainly helped.

I have not written anything else here during that time, of course.  And there's the trick:  how to blog and write a book at the same time.  Writing takes time, and time is limited.