In my year of Create my primary goal has been to write more. Not only this blog – a daily exercise to get words on the page – but fiction. I set up an accountability check with my friend where we send every two weeks . . . and I wrote about all this a few weeks ago already.
But my last accountability check was such a poor showing I clearly need to make a new game plan for writing fiction if I am committed to writing fiction. This morning I need a space to brainstorm a plan.
- One of my favorite Gretchen Rubin secrets to adulthood is “What you do EVERY DAY matters more than what you do ONCE IN A WHILE.”
- I need to figure out how to write fiction every day.
- Do I need to give up something else?
- My morning routine of meditating, reading, blog writing, and exercise has about an 80% accomplishment rate this year. When executed I like it and don’t want to remove any piece of it right now.
- I could get up an hour earlier.
- I would have to go to bed an hour earlier.
- Besides weekends I don’t have time during the day.
- I certainly need to dedicate more time on weekends.
- But what if I wrote for just a half hour every night, before I read?
- At 9pm, in bed even, writing fiction.
- At 9:30pm, reading fiction.
- Then sleep, sleep, sleep.
- I wouldn’t get many words, but 300 words a day is better than none.
- 2000 words a week. I need about 30,000 more so I’d be done by summer.
- With more words on weekends, I’d be done sooner.
- Instead of word count I’ll say this: write a sentence.
- If I write a sentence I’ll most likely write more. It’s the beginning that’s the slog.
- How can I track that I’ve written every day?
- For everything else I have apps or visible blog posts.
- What if I got a calendar or notebook next to my bed and wrote down the last sentence I wrote every night? It could be a cool archive to look back on and it would be dated every day.
- Okay, okay, I can do that.
Y’all are patient to go through that with me but this was helpful. I’m going to try to switch up my nighttime ritual so I can write fiction every day. I’ll keep you posted.
With Love,
Natalie