Starting a new writing discipline
Other posts in the series “Writing on writing”
- Starting a new writing discipline
- What does your writing “habit” look like?
Have you ever just wanted to write? You know what I mean, just begin to write about whatever it is that gets you up in the morning and keeps you up at night? If you have had these types of urges, I’m feeling it with you.
Honestly! I am feeling it. And I’m working on developing the disciplined game plan that will hopefully help me to “make writing a habit”:
- Write one post every morning after completing the reading ritual (you know, getting caught up on everything that has come into the feed reader since the day before)
- Complete whatever the topic of that post is within a 30 minute window (or less, if I feel confident that a good post is in the works)
- Choose to “Save” the post and just put it away for the rest of the day
- As I’m working through the other “real stuff” I have to do at my desk and online, if I have further thoughts/ideas about that morning’s writings, log in, and do some work on it. Things like refining the post’s idea, or if I come across some graphic image that might help dress up the post. Things like that
- Worst case scenario, if I don’t come back to the post at all in a day, sleep on it, and revisit the saved post as the first thing I do when I start writing the next morning
- I believe this will do two things for me, 1) Get me into the flow of yesterday’s writing and more ready to continue with today’s ideas, and 2) Have a last revisit for polishing and tweaks if necessary before actually “Publishing” that post
Now, I do realize that my work will be a “day old”, and I’m alright with that, if this habit gets me to a steady state of writing posts more regularly. And if I’m feeling extraordinarily proficient in a given day and I can write another post after publishing something that seems “urgent”, I’ll do so. Hey, it’s my blog, right?
Most importantly, I hope to get more practice in on the keyboard so that when I do find more time for some of the larger writing projects, I’ll have the habit of writing every day well in place, and will dedicate serious time to those creative projects.
Just for the curious, I’m actually typing the first “draft” of this post on Sunday afternoon just after 4pm, Arizona time. If all goes according to plan, I will publish it early tomorrow morning. (And no, I’m not going to be using the WP “post time stamp” feature, unless I get really proficient and have bunches of postings to get up on the site!)
Hey, one step at a time, Grasshopper!
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4 Responses to “Starting a new writing discipline”
Posted by: James D Kirk - 03/17/2008
A “post post” follow up comment, or two
First, I very much enjoyed the process of creating the post, letting it sit and “age with time” for a bit. I in fact did come up with some additions and upon reviewing the post earlier, I pulled out, tightened, and hopefully made the overall message better.
You may notice the image of the typewriter? That thought came to me this morning so I performed a quick image search on Google Images, which eventually landed me at the Wikipedia Commons site. What a bonanza! Be sure to check them out; I’d never heard of it before.
So, that explains the Creative Commons icons and links below the image. And that took a while, because not only did I have to stumble upon the site, but I then took it upon myself to grab all the appropriate CC images down to my computer, and then upload them to our WP server. Finally, I created the code on the page that allowed me to display the image giving its author/creator proper attribution (as per the CC license), as well as inserting the 24px icons for this particular images capabilities within the license (with links back to the Wikimedia site.)
All that took a lot of time. More than I had intended, and at the same time, the next usage of an image from WM will take next to no time at all! Clearly, however, I have to ensure there will be a next time (and a next, and next!).
Final note on this process: I decided that it might be interesting to create a “series” using a WP plugin that makes inter-linking between related posts an easy thing. I suppose that I could have waited to install the upgrade for the plugin after I had a 2nd post. But that would have been too easy! Now it’s set and ready for the next “Writing on Writing” series post (tomorrow?!) We shall see!
Posted by: Matt - 03/19/2008
I’m always working on a dozen or so posts at once. Of course there will be the one post you just *have* to type and get out there, but usually the ones that you allow to marinate turn out the best.
Posted by: James D Kirk - 03/19/2008
Good to hear. Just checked out your site. Love the “Gummy Bacon” product post. Now I have even more of a reason to steer clear of both “food groups”! Thanks for stopping by.
Posted by: James D Kirk - 04/11/2008
So, it basically sounds like a blogger really needs to know just what type of writer he is. Boy is that helpful!
I don’t know what I want to be half the time. How about you? If you had three cents, E, I would have given your post far more credence! J/K, of course!
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