A month ago, I set out to publish a blog post every single day of the month of February. In the beginning, I had no idea what would happen, how it would go, anything really…
I did assume that if I could develop the muscle memory of doing this everyday, that I would find it easier to sit down and engage in a creative process with less distraction, and hopefully, more success.
my writing muscle
needs exercising daily —
sitting down, scribbling
senryu by <a href="https://medium.com/@cactushaiku/senryu-writing-muscle-c89e3b989c6c" rel="noreferrer noopener" target="_blank">M. Nakazato LaFreniere</a>It was definitely hard at first. Everything felt like Julia Cameron’s morning pages which never really worked for me.
Why did this begin to feel different? An artificial deadline? A curtain going up everyday at 10:01 AM? I think so.
Not the regularity of it (because morning pages has that), it had to be the deadline, and to reinforce that deadline, I made sure to not keep it a secret. I told as many people as possible. I wanted to be held accountable in case I stumbled.
And, stumbling brings me to the next bit. It began to feel like Couch to 5K. Everyday, pushing forward, knowing there was a goal not all that far off. I definitely feel creatively looser now; more able and willing to just start writing without making excuses.
I also experienced what I can only define as Social Media Redirection, where things that may have become tweets or toots became posts here instead. And, because I took to posting those things here, I took more care in crafting them and fleshing out the ideas behind them.
This final post of February is definitely crossing a finish line of sorts. I do not yet know how often I will post here moving forward. I do want to keep the daily writing going but I now need some of this posting time to go to other projects. If I start to get stuck again, I will likely go back to #PostADay for a week or even possibly a month. But for now, I’m going to take a quiet cool down lap around my mind, rehydrate, and consider what road starts for me tomorrow.