On not-writing-small-stones (& a weekly catch up)

Fiona writes: 13 days into noticing something every day & writing it down. How are you getting on?

I've been writing a daily small stone since 2005. I still find it difficult. Sometimes horribly difficult. I think 'I haven't noticed anything today'. I miss three days in a row and have to trawl back through my memory to find something (anything) I've remembered. I wander around with my head in the clouds.

This is OK.

Writing small stones is a practice, like meditation or learning to be better people. We don't sit on our meditation cushion for twenty minutes a day for a week and then tell the world we've mastered it. We do it morning after morning. We don't stop being impatient. We learn more about more about what makes us impatient, and how we can be compassionate with ourselves and with others.

We're dealing with deep-down change here. And as I wrote earlier in the week, this can be nearly-impossible.

If you miss a few days, or a month, that's fine. As soon as you remember, open your eyes. See what you can hear. Pick up your pen and jot something down. There. You're back in the River.

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Do share your small stones with us on the daily post here, on Twitter (use #smallstone), on Facebook, on your blogs, on your fridges, written in the sand on the beach... if you do this, send us a photo!

This week's catch up: Amy Palko is encouraging us to appreciate the gift of the moment, novelist Sarah Salway has put the fun back into writing, Sage Cohen has encouraged us to see writing as a way of life, Dave Bonta told us the four things he's learnt from his very-similar-to-small-stones writing practice over the years, Kaspa mused on how writers should think (after reading Ted Hughes), and I wrote about one of my favourite subjects - being human.

Gosh. All kinds of wisdom and wonderfulness.

Keep writing. Keep loving the world. And don't forget to document the yucky bits too.