I made it a goal to write more consistently this year and here’s the update on how it’s going. Week one is in the can. Here’s how it went:

Discipline is training yourself to do something and a habit is when a behavior becomes routine and automatic.  A task formed through discipline that becomes a habit is the best of both, like learning to brush your teeth as a kid. It’s something you automatically do at set times of day without putting a lot of thought into it. I want writing to be like that, both habitual and effective.

This week I’ve been intentionally sitting back down at my desk (I work from home most days) after dinner, work-in-progress open on the screen in front of me, fingers on the keyboard. And… well… I haven’t written a lot. I’ve scrolled on social media, read a book on my Kindle ap and mucked about. And then there’s the hours lost to building the perfect playlist, designing an aesthetic for inspiration and scrolling google images for research. Not exactly productive. But I’m hoping that building in this time nightly, even if it isn’t producing work quite yet, is at least building a habit.

My first published book was written in the evening hours after work, so I figure setting aside this time might be my best chance for productivity. Maybe there’s some writing muscle memory that will click in. I keep thinking ‘you did this before; you can do it again’ and it’s true. Even if, right now, my brain feels mushy whenever I sit down to write. Eventually the words will come. They’ll probably be terrible, but then again, first drafts always are.  

I have a bad habit of going over the first few chapters again and again rather than moving on to the rest of them. That internal editor never shuts up. It’s tempting to keep going over the same passages and perfecting them when you don’t feel inspired to write the rest. Inspiration is an ephemeral beastie. It shows up when it feels like it so there’s no point in waiting on it. That’s a lesson I learned a while ago.

So for this week, I tallied my actual written words and it’s not great, 2335, but it could be worse so I’m taking that as a win. We’ll see what next week brings.