I’ve been able to maintain my string of 300 words a day. This will be day five. I’m not that excited about what I’ve written, but I have written.
One of the interesting things about this experiment is that writing begets writing. Flexing one’s creative muscles makes them stronger. What do you know? After being blocked for months, if not years, now that I’m forcing myself to write daily, I’m finding it easier to write. While I was blocked, I had no ideas of what to write about. If an idea came to me, I would dismiss it as something no one would want to read about. I was worrying about writing for an audience instead of writing for myself.
That’s kind of crazy, because I don’t have much of an audience anyway and who am I to judge what anyone would find interesting.
I’ve found that the act of writing itself leads to more ideas. In the last five days I’ve had more ideas for things to write about than I have in the last year.
There are, of course, writing mentors that have been preaching this forever. It’s not like this is a big revelation. There’s even a hashtag, #300words. But there’s a difference between getting advice and taking advice. It’s like organization, I know how to organize things, I just never seem to get around to it. Thus the mess that is my desk.
One of the tricks I’ve read is to block out a time and sit down at the keyboard, say fifteen minutes. During this time, you don’t have to write, but you can’t do anything else. This won’t be easy, especially if you are like me and are easily distracted by shiny objects.
The biggest thing, whatever your creative discipline, is to do it. Don’t judge yourself or your work. There is plenty of time to go back and make improvements, to learn from your mistakes and hone your skills. Over time the quality will come.
