Six Slice of Life Lessons Learned

Last year was my third year to participate in the Two Writing Teachers Slice of Life Blog Post Challenge. I am by no means an expert at the slice of life blog, but every year I have learned something of value from participating in it. And while I am not participating this year I did want to take the time to share what I learned in previous attempts at it.    

Lesson 1 - Attention

Doing the slice of life challenge forces you to pay closer attention to the world around you.  I noticed things in my classroom and on my walks that normally I would overlook.  Even the act of reading other blogs requires a bit more attention, because you are reading what others have noticed and find yourself thinking "Oh, I need to look for that in my life or my writing as well!"

Lesson 2 - Consistency

It goes without saying that because the challenge is daily, writing consistently is key.  I find myself trying to be strategic with my writing and even on the busiest day making a sliver of time to slice.  I haven't done a daily challenge in awhile, so this was a needed stretch for me.  It's even made me excited for writing again when so much of my writing lately has felt repetitive.

Lesson 3 - Endurance

With my consistency comes endurance.  I appreciated this last night when I was struggling to come up with a post to write.  A few years ago, I may have given up.  However, I knew that because I was already this deep into the challenge that I didn't want to quit.  I wrote something, not my favorite slice, but something to publish.  I pushed ahead.  I endured. 

Lesson 4- Adapt

This might be my favorite lesson to come out of slicing.  I love adapting and adopting other writing forms and trying them out in my blog posts.  This year I was introduced to forms like "Fortunately/Unfortunately" and I even felt bold enough to write a post about trivia night as if it were a series of trivia questions.  This challenge encourages you to adopt all kinds of styles and make them your own.

Lesson 5 - Brevity

Not everyone writes short slices, but I found the ones I enjoyed the most to be short -- both in reading and writing.  Not to mention just the idea of a slice of life implies -- at least to me -- that it SHOULD be short.  I find this is perhaps a hidden component of the challenge, because you want to balance the line between detailed description and rambling.

Lesson 6 - Community

I saved this particular lesson for last because I think it is one we at Teach Write are VERY familiar with, but still need to be reminded of sometimes.  

When it comes to SOLSC the most important lesson comes from sharing your writing with others.  It makes for a lot of fun and makes publishing less scary.  Not only do you have support from those of us at Teach Write, but your fellow slicers will remember and engage with you on a regular basis beyond the challenge.

And, since you are part of my community, I ask: what have you learned?