Towards a consistent writing practice
Post 1 of 30
It is the first of April, and so, today, I'm making a pact with myself to build a consistent writing practice for the next 30 days. Why am I doing this? I suppose other people might be in a similar position, so I'm happy to share my thoughts on this.
First things first, I am in my early thirties and I've wanted to write a book since I was 13; a novel, to be precise. Ever since my very first attempt (a shameless rip-off of a bunch of popular fantasy novels), I've spent a lot of my free time writing, but at the same time, not nearly enough. Moreover, my brain works in short bursts, which means I might go through explosive creative episodes, write 10-15k words of a given project in a few weeks, and then abandon all hope once the hype dies down.
In the last few years, I've realised that excitement is key when it comes to creativity. I can't bring a project to completion if I'm not excited about it. But there's another element that still eludes me, and that element is discipline. It's an ugly word, I think. Stern, scornful. It evokes pictures of strict parents and punishment. But I can't hope to finish writing my first novel if I don't show up every single day, and so, I vow to build a steady practice through the use of discipline.
I'm going to give this a crack in a bit of an unusual way. In the past, I would've set a goal for myself in the form of a daily wordcount; this time, I'm allowing myself not to work on my novel for one month. My goal is only to show up here, on this blog, every day for the rest of the month, and write about anything, because I'm not trying to build a novel-writing habit from the jump, but a showing-up one. Does this sound silly? Counterproductive? Someone could say that my time is better spent honing my craft, and that I shouldn't waste it on writing anything other than fiction, but I disagree: this is a pact that I am making with myself, and it will feed into my creativity eventually.
I also have a wordcount goal for this project, but I don't want to share it yet! The wordcount is secondary to my needs; the important thing is showing up.
My hope is that, by the time May arrives, I will find that the muscle I need to sit down and write has already been exercised; the habit should be formed, it will just need to be translated into novel writing instead. To be clear, I don't know if this is going to work! The whole project might crash and burn after a few days, or maybe I'll find out that the habit doesn't translate as well as I hope. I'm giving myself permission to try, and see where this thing is going; this will also be a great platform to keep thinking out loud about novel writing. I'm not as interested in the destination as I am in the actual journey. I think this might be fun, actually!