I couldn’t write this first thing today, because something else had to come first. That old, creaky door sound you heard? That was my writing laptop being opened for the first time in a month.
That may not seem like a big deal—just a month! But look at it this way: I’d painfully built up a new writing habit or “muscle” in November (thanks to NaNoWriMo and other committed fools who egged me on), and then I stopped cold-turkey. Didn’t write anything for a month. The muscle atrophied. I was afraid I wouldn’t remember how to use it at all. Then came today.
You see, today is a big day. NaNoWriMo worked out so well for me and another friend/gifted writer (crazy person), Debbie Arora, that we decided a mere 30 days of writing was wimpy. We were going to do 100 days! OK, we amended that to something more realistic … and though “100 days of something” doesn’t have the same panache, we’re going with that.
Me? I’ve committed to 100 straight days of doing something to further my fiction writing career. That could be working on the draft of book two that I started during NaNoWriMo (one of my goals is to finish said draft in said days). It could also be researching, blogging, tweeting, or making arrangements for book tours in the second half of this year. But I’ve got to do SOMETHING every day. For 100 days.
Maybe it’s a case of “begin as I mean to go on.” Because today, not only did I have to actually do some work before bleating far and wide about *planning* to do some work, but also, I had to dive back into that unfinished draft I’d blasted out in November. Hence, the creaky door sound. Hence the creaky mind sounds. But I did it. The words weren’t pretty, and there weren’t thousands of them. But I did something.
Because I know that muscle is buried in here somewhere….
Debbie’s fantastic blog: http://missivesfromsuburbia.blogspot.com/
Her take on our insanity: http://missivesfromsuburbia.blogspot.com/2011/01/100-days.html
I'm happy about this on a few levels. While oftentimes folks who resolve to do something / anything at the outset of a New Year find themselves lapsing 20-something days into January, I suspect you'll achieve significantly more. Looking forward to seeing how this shakes out for you!
ReplyDeleteAn entertaining read and an exciting goal, but mostly, I love the name: "100 Days Of Something". It's got the kind of ring to it I like to hear... as long as I'm being productive, I almost don't care what I accomplish. But then you accidentally end up doing great things sometimes. Keep it up -- can't wait to see how it goes.
ReplyDelete