I am a person who thrives on goal-setting. Between my house and my office, I have no less than three white boards where I have “tasks”, “goals”, or “to-do’s” listed in an orderly (and often color-coded) fashion. For instance, I can tell you that my summer life (i.e., not work) to-do list included camping, visiting a nearby state park, running, daily meditation, and writing. For the two people in the universe who might subscribe to this blog, you might already know that the writing goal didn’t exactly get done this summer (the others, however, I did manage to accomplish, so I still consider the summer a success!).

I’ve been harboring dreams of writing a novel for years. I’ve kept journals and books full of poetry for as long as I can remember. Sometimes I open up a book or a sketch pad to find lines and lines of poetry or thoughts scribbled among the pages. As I moved towards a career in the sciences, my creative writing has gone by the wayside. I think part of this has to do with the fact that I write a lot during the day. I set aside at least 30 minutes of each day to write. This type of writing, however, is incredibly bland and is very factual. As a result, I feel absolutely ridiculous when I incorporate even basic adjectives into my writing (what a waste of space!). At the same time, I’m incredibly proud of my scientific writing-I’ve developed into a solid, succinct writer all thanks to tremendous amount of practice. This is true of most things I’m good at today. They’ve all taken countless hours of work, sweat, and more tears than I really care to admit.

So, here is my very wordy commitment to try to practice my creative writing during the month of October. It’s a pledge to write something every day; to use language that makes my readers feel some connection to me or my story; to not be too embarrassed to write what I’m feeling. I don’t know how it will go, or even if I’ll enjoy the process. But hopefully by the end of the month I’ll be able to put a nice fat line through that summer (fall?!?) goal!