write daily

I’ve been having some trouble with this goal this week. Not because it has been going badly. To the contrary, actually. I’ve managed four days out of seven this week and I’m confident I can go better.

The problem is probably with my conception of this goal. What I feel I should be doing when I write daily is working on my creative stories. So that’s what I’ve been doing, figuring I’ll work on my uni thesis after I’m done. Except I’m not getting to the uni work. By that time, I seem to have run out of motivation.

Now there’s two solutions to this problem. Either I expand my conception of this goal to include my uni work or I prioritise my uni work first, do my creative work after and risk running out of energy to do so. Either way my creative work looks to suffer.

I feel so frustrated. Why can’t I have both at the same time? There’s only a little bit to go on my thesis but it’s getting increasingly difficult to put off my creative work until it’s done.

I haven’t yet come to a decision about how I am going to handle it. I guess I’ll just see what next week brings.

This was a terrible week to be adopting this goal. Truly, I don’t know what I was thinking. I guess my enthusiasm just got the better of me :D

The reason it was such a terrible week for this is that I had a number of important birthdays in my family. Historically, this is never a good week for my writing. One day I hope to be writing more during this week of the year, but it will have to be something I build up to, not something I start off with.

I only sat down to write once this week and only got a little done when I did. It was still something that I was happy I did, though.

At any rate, forward ho! Hopefully it can only get better from here.

For the past month, I haven’t logged on to 43T. I’m not sure why, but the usual excuses or rationalizations abound. August is always a heavy month.

Now I’m breaking the pattern. And the right place to start is with an update on this task.

In the past month I’ve written in my journal almost every day, with a few gaps driven my schedule. But my creative work has fallen off from my “page a day” pace of the summer. I’m committed, though, to get back to this pace.

Not every day is brilliant prose. But every day I do creative work feels like a better day, and on all but one day, there was something of value that I produced.

Today is where my book begins. And the rest is still unwritten.

I’ve been thinking about this goal a lot lately and whether I should take it on. There’s two main issues I seem to have with it. The first is that I’ll be finishing up uni soon and looking for a job, meaning that any progress I make on this now is going to get shaken up later. I’m somewhat amused that I think this is a good reason not to try. Who knows? The more firmly established this becomes now the more chance it has of surviving later.

The other issue is that I’m worried I’m not physically capable of pulling it off, since I have some difficulties with my wrist and neck. Perhaps this simply means I need some supporting goals concerned with my health.

Due to some impending deadlines on one project and my sheer passion for another, I’ve managed to write every day this week so far—sometimes just outlines, but it still counts. Now the trick is to keep the momentum.

In the morning seems to be better, after just a wee bit of thinking.

I can’t remember the name of the book at the moment but it’s about unlocking your creative side. It suggests drawing alot, specifically keeping an illustrative journal. It is pretty brilliant as I love journalling but sometimes words are just sort of messy lines and you can convey so much more with an image. I’ve been trying it lately and it’s a great excuse to practice drawing while actually recording your experiences.

Apparently a picture IS worth a thousand words…

I really don’t know the root cause of it – possibly meeting with people who I hadn’t seen in a while, maybe just the mild thrills of long car rides or maybe the anticipation of my final year of formal education. The challenge now is to keep up my pace.

Yesterday I didn’t do any creative work. _{I did get some exercise for a change, though.}

A small defeat. Now I can’t let it happen again.

First week complete. I wrote 20 minutes or more every day this week. The actual total amount of time writing and editing for the week is actually around four and a half hours. In addition, I put in 14 pages of journaling.

“A writer is someone who wrote this morning.” – Roberta Jean Bryant

By that definition, I’ve been a writer for more than a year!

So far so good.

I have dedicated 20 minutes a day to creative work (which includes editing, re-writing, character sketches and the like) for four days in a row.

I even got a new draft poem in the deal!