write on a regular schedule

When the kids are in school full-time, I shall have my days free again. In the meantime, I am looking at these years as a learning experience and a challenge to my determination and focus.

second day, have been in a really great mood since doing this!

as dorky as it sounds, and as resistant as I am to it, I started doing the artists way which requires “morning pages” every morning, so today was my first day doing that.

Nothing yet today. Lots of chores, long phone meeting mid-day, childcare from mid-afternoon on. Still, I bet I could have carved out a half hour somewhere, if I had really wanted to (or wanted to in the right way, or in an effective way).

The day is not over yet. Perhaps after dinner, after the kids are asleep, I can still put in the half hour that creates momentum and rescues self-respect.

Of course, looking on the bright side, I have just written this.

By the way: an alternative title for this goal might have been Write First. Work on putting that slogan into practice.

Writing regularly, for short periods of time, is the best way to write. It is sustainable, for one thing; if you ever do get yourself to sit down and write for eight hours straight, when will you do that again? Won’t you come to see writing as a horror? Also, aiming day after day at a long writing session, and failing to so much as get started, is disheartening. Aiming day after day at writing for half an hour, and succeeding (which is possible!), is heartening. Set yourself up for success.

When I write for half an hour, I enjoy it, and feel a surge of pleasure afterwards. Why, then, do I sometimes go for weeks without writing? Well, why do any of us fail to do what we know will be good for us, what we know we will enjoy, what is readily achievable? Because of bad habits, and because of irrational expectations of ourselves; therefore we need to build good habits, and become more reasonable—friendlier to ourselves, I suppose you might say.

So:

1. Write freely at first, to generate material; then restructure and edit later.

2. Give myself small rewards after completing each writing session.

3. Counter my own irrational thinking. (For instance, when I think, in the back of my mind, “I can’t do this,” tell myself the truth: I have done it before; I am setting an eminently practical goal now.)

4. Make writing, or the quest to write, less isolated; seek support, constructively critical comments, etc.

This advice comes straight from Robert Boice, and is backed by plenty of research (as well as my own experience, for a while; but I have fallen off the wagon).

Okay, back on that wagon now. Discipline, structure, and habit precede motivation, and produce motivation.