Time to start a habit. . .
I had a bit of an “Ah ha!” moment this morning while chatting with Sommer Mardsen on Twitter. You see, I’ve always admired Sommer’s ability to just churn out the wordage. This morning, for instance, before I’d even managed my coffee(granted, it was an uncharacteristically slow start for me today) she’d gotten 1200 words in. And it wasn’t but a bit past 8am.
I admire that. But she pointed out something when I lamented my very sporadic productivity. Make it a habit. Every day make a goal of 1k. And do it. Day in and day out until you reach the point where it’s a habit(I’ve heard varying timespans for this process, from 2 weeks to a month). Either which way, she’s got a very very valid point.
When I was at my most productive last year that’s what I was doing. I got up and wrote. I wrote on lunch. I got home and wrote for an hour before dinner. Granted, a part of that productivity was escapism from the drama of my day to day life, but it was a habit and one I enjoyed keeping up.
Then I turned my life all about and never got that habit going again.
So. Day 1 is today. I’ve got a spreadsheet set up to track my wordage and will post to the blog as well. As yet today(unless you count the wordcount of this blog post : at the moment, 234 words) I’m at a nice, round zero, but I’ll be changing that shortly. If I can figure out how to chart my progress and post it to the blog I will ;)
Anyways. It’s time to dive into the fray.
P.S. Sommer and I were talking about Halloween decorating and so forth. I did a search on Google Images : “touch the heart with the tip of a pin” . . . scroll down a bit and you’ll see the pumpkin. It struck me, so…now you get to see it too.
As long as you don’t start using the charting of progress as a distraction from writing I think you’ll do just fine.
I’m not nearly close to sitting down and writing daily, but I’m reviewing my procrastinating habits and trying to be more productive too.
Here’s to good habits.
Ru x
*laughs* yes, well, I did kill an hour of my three hour block of time doing my blog post, setting up the chart, and so on. Oh. And between Pinterest and Etsy. Closing down my distractions now!
And yes. Here’s to good habits. *chink*
~Ais
They say it takes about six weeks for habits to form. Last year I “did” NaNorWriMo simply to get the focus on the daily quota. I ended up doing double duty and a total of 100k words (admittedly more than half are now trashed) in a month. It was immensely rewarding to just sit down and push myself to get out nearly 3,500 words on a daily basis. But it was exhausting. I didn’t write for a month after that. This year, I’ll do it again to get myself back in focus, but with just one project. One of the nice things about NaNoWriMo is they have a daily tracker with a ticker you can link to your blog if you want. But, that’s a month away…. Good luck with the daily goal and forming that habit!
Thanks!! I did NaNo last year as well and had essential the same results – I couldn’t write for most of the month of December. I’m not sure if I’ll do it this year or not, depending on how things are progressing! I am hoping to set a minimum habit of 1K a day(as Sommer has) with anything else being bonus. That’s still 7K a week, 28K a month, and more than respectable!!
~Ais