We’ve heard it all before – from books, articles, the words of advice from our friends, and the back of our minds too. *You should be writing every day.* Well for some of us it isn’t that easy. Or is it?
Writing every day can seem like a challenge to us. I know it was a challenge that I didn’t master for years – a challenge that I probably still haven’t mastered. But I have a good 100 day streak going, so I thought it was time for a post.
“Start a blog!” “Write by hand!” “Just one sentence!”
These are the pieces of advice plastered over every inch of writing motivation space in every form of media. “But that won’t work for me,” I always tell myself, “Even if it did, what good does it do?”
Writing every day – even about unimportant things like what a huge ass you friend was being last night – helps spur creativity. It starts good habits, and it gives us ideas we never recognized were good until they formed on the paper (read: screen) in front of us.
A lot of people advocate for blogging – but with blogging there is an inherent need to put our best work forward, and sometimes that can stop us from writing anything at all.
I advocate for a journal. No this doesn’t have to be a dear diary type of journal, just a document you make with the date on the first line of every entry that grows longer as you write each day (if you have scrivener, this works really well because you can make a new entry for every day, and even group them around phases in your life). At the end of the day, even if you haven’t written a single word and have nothing to say, you can open that document and write “Nothing good happened today. I have nothing to say,” and boom, you just wrote something. And even more amazingly that more often than not it turns into, “I have nothing to say. But I wish that ______. Tomorrow I’ll try to _______.” And then your off to the races. Even if it turns into just one paragraph, and that’s all you do every day, that’s 365 paragraphs in a year – probably close to 180 pages. That’s a novella, or half a novel, or just 180 separate pages – any way you look at it, that’s an accomplishment.
So if we’re having trouble writing, we can always write in a journal. Write at least one word in it every day – it’s surprising what that habit can add up to.
Here’s a good article that I read just before I wrote this post:
http://zenhabits.net/write-daily/
And if you don’t have a good medium for writing try this:
http://writedaily.co/
I don’t personally use it (I use scrivener), but many of my friends do, and they love it.
Happy writing.
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