What has possessed me to partake in a 500 word a day challenge? I’m painfully shy after all and even writing offers a transparency that can be terrifying.
There is a practical and grounding reason to write 500 words every day. Other than that’s what writers do.
In truth, I want to lift the curtain for myself. Writing often feels similar to the Wizard of Oz. The magic is a result placed on display every day. While all of the planning, writing, typing and correcting happens behind this curtain where no one can see it.
Writers even fall prey to the idea writing. What writing “is supposed to look like” instead of what it actually is. Writing is a steady cadence, a scoop of chaos, and gut wrenching work. The craft engages every aspect of self from the physicality to the emotional and mental.
In the spirit of creating goals for this challenge. The first is the easiest and most necessary.
- Commit: Commit to the process. Commit to the good, the bad, and the indifferent. Commit to the fall out whatever that may be.
- Improve: I want to be great. Great is an extremely high order. While I’ve written all my life and feel that I am good. The best writer is one who writes consistently no matter what.
- Tender Loving Care for My Blog: My blog is my baby. That sounds dramatic but it’s true. That is not because blogging is in right now. It also is not in the hopes of boosting client visibility (although that would be nice). It is because I want my audience to meet me. It’s easier to trust a source when you have an idea of who they are.
- Patience: This challenge is a true development of patience. Often, I wish my jumbled free writes would turn into works of art simply by the flick of my pen. Where I am patient with delayed bus schedules, customers, friends and family. I am rarely patient with craft and my calling. Somehow “it supposed to all come together” which is an illusion. No one wakes up and runs a 5k without having trained for it. No writer wakes up and produces a novel or a well-read blog. It is all deliberate practice and application of patience.
I hope you stay tuned on this 31 day trek.
Tell me given the challenge, what would you want to get done in 31 days?
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