Dear Readers, I’m thrilled to report that it’s been 70 days of straight writing as of this post.
I am very amazed at myself. One, because if you care to go back through the blog posts, you can see that I’ve had a very difficult time keeping any type of a regular schedule both times I’ve attempted to keep this space current and Two because the Start/Stop pattern has been so pervasive in my life.
Yet, as I celebrate this success, I am half-dreading an upcoming challenge.
And that challenge is taking a vacation.
I’ll sip my tea while you scratch your head, roll your eyes or just stare at the screen in puzzlement.
On the 20th, my sister and I will be boarding a cruise ship and sailing off for a 5-day vacation of sun, fun and bonding. At this time, I don’t have access to a mobile word processing machine. I mean, if I absolutely WANTED to I could charm my husband’s laptop out of him for those 5 days, but he’s a full time student and needs the mobile tech more than I do.
My sister has an iPad. I could borrow that during our cruise, but see…that’s the not the point of vacation. And when it comes time to leave, I’ll have been writing for 80 straight mornings. Eighty is a good number and plus, how will I ever learn to start AGAIN if I don’t have those breaks?
I used to believe (and sometimes I still do) that the only so-called ‘real writers’ were the ones that wrote everyday. But as I hang out with more writers, as I meet more people who have been doing this longer than a couple of years, as I examine what makes success and who becomes good and who doesn’t, I have realized that while the habit is important, it’s not what makes me a Writer.
If you write stuff down and tell yourself stories, you’re a writer. Period. If you write every day, you’re a writer. If you write every week, you’re a writer. If you write one or two stories during your school breaks, or when you get an idea, you’re a writer.
The more you write, the better you get but a writer without a strict schedule is still a writer. That has been an important realization.
Does that mean that after I get back from my cruise that I’m going to quit getting up every day? Hell no. I have 1 hour a day that I’ve dedicated to writing. One. Hour. And while I always have the option of writing more when I get home from work, I have accepted that in the evenings, I usually only have enough energy to do one or two things and usually it’s nothing that’s creatively minded.
Finally, just wanted to reveal my blog schedule to you all in case you were wondering:
This blog is updated every three days, except for the days that I’ll be out of contact.
While I know a M/W/F is probably a more accepted schedule, I’ve found that if I can get a post up every three days I always have something to say.
If you want to join in on the community that has been helping me keep consistent, hit me up on Twitter at @dracoangelica or go listen to Ally Bishop’s episode 100 of her podcast ‘Upgrade Your Story‘. She’s starting a community driven workshop called The Cerulean Project and it’s been very helpful for my habit structures.