Welcome to Day 13 of a 31 day challenge to write 500 words or more. For more on that click here: goinswriter.com
I’m discovering a lot about myself as I take on this 31 day challenge. Here’s what I’ve picked up so far:
ONE: The more I write the less concerned I am about perfection. Yesterday I just sat down, wrote and then hit publish. Boom! That quick. No formatting. Full of typos. Not pretty but I didn’t care.
Refreshing.
TWO: Fresh eyes make all the difference. Today I went back to look at yesterday’s post and noticed that just a quick glance through made it better. I changed a word or two here and there. Fixed some typos and moved on but it was better than the original.
Makes sense.
THREE: I still get frustrated because I don’t have a topic. I sit down and either try to think of something or just start typing. It’s nice to be able to just sit down and type for the sake of the discipline but I already sense the frustration of what that will feel like outside of this exercise.
FOUR: When I write, I generally want to write more. Getting started is the primary roadblock. Once I sit down and actually get moving I rarely want to stop at 500 words. I have more ideas and I want to keep going.
FIVE: Stopping is as much a discipline as starting is. My problem is not that I never write, it is that I write impulsively and inconsistently. I get the bug and I hit it hard but it comes in waves. I’m sure an audit of my blog date stamps would tell the tale. I will put a post, feel good about it and put out another in the same week. Then wait a month or more before writing again. Toning that down into consistent content requires discipline. The discipline of starting when I want to stay stopped and stopping when I want to stay started.
SIX: I am a shotgun writer. I point in a general direction and pull the trigger hoping to hit something. Even my thoughts are scattered and random. I’m hoping that developing a discipline of daily writing will add a bit of calculation to the bigger picture. My immediate goal is to know what I’m going to write about before I sit down to write.
SEVEN: I am an impatient writer. I write with a sense of urgency towards hitting publish — which is the natural final step of a piece. It gives me stress to consider waiting for a more optimal publishing time and I will stay up until 3am to avoid breaking it into two days.
EIGHT: Everything works better with a plan. I actually didn’t learn that from this exercise, I learned it from a wise, wise friend — but it fits here. Scattered and inconsistent works hold some value, but it would all work better with a plan . . . and planning, just like writing . . . is a discipline.
Tomorrow I will write a list of things to write about. This is working already.
And those are my 500 words.
