Week One of the Ninety Day Writing Challenge

When I posted that I was going to be doing a writing challenge, I knew that it was not going to be the most popular idea and that was fine. The challenge was for my own discipline, no one else's. I was surprise though, to see such negative comments on my post. The biggest concern, it seemed, was that I would be stifling my own creativity by pushing/forcing myself to write every
day. This seemed like an odd concern to me because 1) I am starting myself off small. Two hundred words a day is not much at all. I purposefully put my goal that low to start because the point is not to stress myself out, but to train myself with repetition. 2) There are so many literary giants, self-help books, and even NanoWrimo itself who push writers to write even a little every day. Training yourself is not always fun or even pleasant, and we would be foolish to think otherwise. In "9 Things Great Writers Do Every Day", Neil Patel writes this:

"To become a better writer, you have to write. A lot. Every day. There’s no way to improve without actually doing it.

"When you get into the habit of writing on a daily basis, your brain begins to anticipate it and prepare for it. This is especially true if you write at the same time each day. Way before you put hands to the keyboard, the brain’s juices are flowing, allowing you to be more creative, more precise, and more skillful during your writing time.

"Every 30 minutes that you spend writing is 30 minutes that you’re getting better. Progress may not be huge, but at least it’s progress."

It doesn't take much to write thirty minutes everyday or to cover a few hundred word writing goal. Once you have trained yourself to do it, the rest will follow fairly easily. 

This week I have seen such a positive change. In just seven days I went from sort of dreading the
exercise on day one to actually getting excited to get to writing by the end of the week. I wanted to savor that excitement, so I purposefully made myself limit myself to around three hundred words a day for this week at least. My focus was building a habit only and I feel that that was a good choice for me.

I have also only been writing with my Livescribe pen. I have rediscovered how much I enjoy writing by hand rather than by computer. It has made writing at work functional as well. I love that everything that I write in my Livescribe notebook can be easily loaded digitally and switched to text with the swipe of a finger. I will be writing a review on my experience with Livescribe soon, but for the most part, it has been quite pleasant to use. This whole article has been written with
the Livescribe pen with minimal editing needed.

I would have to say that week one was very successful. I cannot wait to see the progress that
I will be making not only in my writing projects, but also in my own writing habits. It is my hope that the habit of writing every day will extend far beyond the ninety day mark and this will have positive effects that will help me for the rest of my writing life.