So today marks the 9th day of the “My 500
Words”
challenge. So far it hasn’t been
too bad, and I’ve been able to get over 500 words each
day. Today it seems a little more difficult. Part of it is not knowing what to write
(though I suppose I could look at some of the prompts and ideas I’ve
written down), and part of it is that I’m finding
it difficult to write when I get up in the morning (after I’ve gotten
ready for work), and when I get home from work I’m
tired. So, I end up putting it off until
later in the evening (much like I’m doing
now) and feel like I have to push myself to write something.
On the positive side, this little challenge is helping to
develop discipline in writing. I haven’t been
focusing so much on the novel or any story, but I’ve been
writing on my blogs. And even though it
might not be “quality” stuff, I
am writing.
Mostly my posts have
been written on the fly, without much thought as to what I’d write. I think that is because I’m quite
tired by that time and I’m just doing the assignment to
get it completed. I hope that when I
have more time (like on the weekends), I can sit down and write a better
quality post, or add to my novel or short stories.
Maybe what I could do this coming weekend, is take the writing
prompts I’ve got and outline what I could say about
each topic (or take a couple of them at a time and do this), or jot a few ideas
downs to remind myself of what I could include.
Then I might have some direction, and could write a better quality post,
rather than rambling on.
I think right now with this challenge, I’m just
trying to focus on the discipline and getting in the habit of writing each
day. Once this habit forms (or after the
challenge, even weaning it down to once every other day until I have more time
to be able to write each day – like on holidays and vacations from teaching),
then I could focus on doing more research for topics, more editing, or more
significant passages.
I just hope it’s this is not a case of “I’m doing
this because I’ve been issued a challenge and I don’t want to
fail at it,” and then give up for whatever reason and not
write for large chunks of time.
Otherwise, I’ll never get anything written –
well, except for some blog posts.
Well, it looks like I’m going
to finish today’s quota, thought it certainly won’t be
nearly as long as any of the previous posts (or at least the majority of
them). I’ve only
got another couple of sentences to write and then I can call it a night. Hopefully, since tomorrow is Friday, and
providing I take a little nap in the early evening to take the edge off, I can
get more writing done (or at least create a few blog posts that I can schedule
for later dates).
