I’ve built a habit of writing every day. It was hard. I can now safely say that I write every day. It took me two long years after long decades of failure. Why did I do that? I did it to better myself. I always found it a waste to live a fragmented life without systematically making sense of what happens to us.
And that was the initial intention, to start a continuous conversation with myself. To learn more about me, to improve my skills, to create opportunities, personal and professional.
And, I must say, I got my share of benefits, for sure. But, systematically, when I consider this daily creative effort as a choir, I fall back into the trap of the routine. I write because I have to write. Which is fine, don’t get me wrong. But my goal is not just to fill a page with words to say I did it. It would defeat my original purpose.
What do I want, then? I need to go beyond the daily habit to write and publish. Because it makes quite a difference to just write into your private journal (like I did for 365 days and half a million words) compared to publish it every single day, for instance, for more than 150 days like I am doing right now.
The threshold of going public makes a difference. Again, consider I am writing for myself, mamma, and a couple of dear friends, but I still have this habit so engrained with me that, really, I cannot stop.
So, what? What do you want, Max?
I miss going deeper. I cannot reserve more than 20-30 minutes per day for this personal creative space. And it is barely enough to put up a new blog post. Where is the deep reflection about worthy topics? Where are the insights? The reflections? The new ideas?
I miss going deeper. And I need to be patient. One possibility is to take the tiniest piece of a concept and write about it in those 30 minutes. I can write 300 words in half an hour which is not bad.
What if I go to 200 words, but I take time to do lightning research and validation? I would move from the spur of the moment, of the flow of conscience (like this, for instance) to a little more deep thought I might be prouder to share.
That’s for me to test and see if it works.
Go to explore, Max!
Written in 12 Minutes. Revised in 5 minutes.
I am Massimo Curatella, and this is my DAY 19 Article in the CREAZEE Daily Writing Challenge and 156th daily article in a row.
2 responses to “The spur of the moment”
Why not writing a post in several increment/days? I think Carlos described that today. Write today, revise tomorrow, and so on. None of my texts for the Challenge is definitive. I have my Day13-14 file opened since then and I keep adding to it. You can write everyday, that’s the habit, but why do you have to publish everyday? Do you have to?
I am afraid to lose the habit. What if by skipping a day I feel like I can skip them all?