Creative Commuting

If you are reading this, hopefully you are not already on your way to or from work. Or at least, not driving in either of those directions.

Try this exercise. Write something right now. Write a paragraph on any subject. Write two.

For most of us, that is extremely difficult. To be able to create something, to put words on a page spontaneously outside of an email or a chatroom is not easy.

For some of us, spontaneity in email and chatrooms is not easy. The ideas might be there, but the difficulty comes in conveying it from the brain to the medium.

Time spent in a vehicle on the commute back and forth to work can be put to creative use. Buy a portable recording device. Don't forget tapes if you buy a tape recorder, or cables to hook it up to your computer; you're going to want to transfer your daily recordings to the computer to have a back up, and to make it easier to edit when that time comes.

You should spend some time deciding what it is you want to use this time for. It could be a daily journal; mountains of mundane, monotonous activity interspersed with the occasional bright spot of inspiration. Or aggravation. One day it could be a poem, testing different words and rhythms, or a song. It could be the beginning to your autobiography.

"My life isn't interesting enough to write an autobiography," you say.

Maybe not now. Or maybe not to you. What about your children? And their children. There are several advantages to starting an autobiography now, even if you don't feel your life deserves any special attention. First of all, events that happen today will be much easier to keep straight if you record them today. Record your impressions, your emotions. Record your route to work, what the weather is, news events of the day. You never know if some of that useless information may one day become pertinent. Even if it doesn't, details are what make for good stories.

A new day dawns. It is your first trip back to work armed with your new recorder. You turn it on, set it to record... and end up with 18 minutes of silence because all those thoughts of what you were going to record have fled to the darkest recesses of your mind, and no amount of coaxing, cajoling, or caffeine will drag them to the forefront. So now what?

Do not despair. Think of this as an extension to the thoughts racing through your mind. Vocalize what you can. To start with, order is not necessarily as important as content. Get something recorded. Remember, this is a new medium for you. A new method of expressing what you want to say. As with most things, a little patience and some practice will make it seem like second nature.

You will want to transfer your recordings to a computer with some frequency. How often is up to you, but often enough to not lose anything of value. You might want to invest in some speech recognition software. With some training, the software will save you from having to type all of your recordings by hand. One word of caution... read the resulting manuscript carefully. The software can be reliable, but it is not perfect. Who knows? You might even produce a best seller using this technique.

Learn more about this author, Michael Raymond.
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