The Bucket List

Posted by in Time, Writing

From my Newsletter, Autumn 2009

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I was talking to my mother on the phone two weeks ago and she said, of going to the new Yankee Stadium, “That’s another thing off my bucket list!” That night, while giving the exercise of writing down ten book ideas to a new class, I thought, hmm, what if you had a book bucket list?

If you are wondering what the heck buckets have to do with anything, a bucket list is a list of things you want to do before you die (“kick the bucket”). This isn’t supposed to be a depressing thing, but a focusing tool. In this new class, I had a student in her twenties – much younger than most of my students. So when she listed ten book ideas I thought, “That could be a lifetime of work right there.”

Now that I’ve turned 50, I realize that my current list of ten books needs to be prioritized. These are my categories: the one, two, or three that I must write before I die (i.e., now), and the four-to-seven that are less important (that maybe I can give to someone else to do, or just save till after these are done).

If you were in one of my classes and did this exercise already, you may want to pull it out and see if there’s anything there you want to think about (especially if you are in the process of completing one). If you are afraid of feeling overwhelmed, it’s actually my experience that having a new book to write is a help in letting go of lingering (“perfecting,” i.e., procrastinating) over the current book.

If you didn’t do this exercise in class with me, you can do it now, on your own. Here’s how:  Set a timer for three minutes. Make a list from 1 to 10 on a page, then turn the timer on and just write all you can think of. Having a small amount of time actually helps you access your subconscious – where all your really good and fun ideas live.

Note: I write my newsletter articles in advance of publication.  See below for sad news about one of the writers in our community.  In her, and all of our honors, I did not change the article for this issue.