The Camera is Watching
My daughter’s friend told a story of a girl who set her phone camera on time-lapse as she did her homework. The goal was discipline: when she looked back at her time-lapse video, she didn’t want to see any wasted moments. The threat of unproductivity motivated her to keep focused.
I was intrigued. I personally haven’t tried this, but I like the idea of being accountable to yourself. Given that writing is such a long process—and that some of your writing times may feel sluggish—could this help you keep going? It’s a bit of a “Big Brother/Sister” is watching, only, in this case, the “higher power” is you.
Writing can be a lot of “downtime”—staring into the cosmic void of nothingness we call writer’s block—so the resulting video may not reveal obvious progress. On the other hand, could it stop us from going down rabbit holes on the Internet or social media? If good writing starts with A.I.C. (Ass. In. Chair.), could filming ourselves be a way to remind us that while we’re sitting there, we should actually do some, well, writing?
I’m not always one for gimmicks, but I am one for strategy. Since we all have a different writing processes, motivations and discipline, I’m always intrigued to how others work.
Or, my camera will just show me writing blog post after blog post—which is, of course, so much easier than my half-finished work-in-progress. 🙂