Phew.
I wish I could say this past week was better than the first, but it really wasn’t. It was just as hard if not harder. I had come out of the box sprinting and started struggling to just maintain a jog.
Even writing this, I feel so damn tired. So let’s head into the bullet points of lessons learned:
- Write every day. It’s been debated back and forth by writers throughout the years, but if there is one thing this month has taught me is that there is validity to it. It doesn’t have to be with the goal of hitting 50K words in a month, but you should at least open that document, add a sentence, look at it and acknowledge it every day.
- Change up your environment. Write at the library. Write at coffee shops. Write at book stores. Write in your car. But don’t make it somewhere too interesting, or else you’ll do whatever it is one does at that location without actually writing.
- Pace yourself. I like the pomodoro method, which is 20 minute spurts of work followed by a five minute break. Obviously sometimes you’ll hit a streak and lose track of this, but try to at least monitor when you last got up to stretch your legs.
- Feeling guilty is pointless, meaningless garbage. There is a lot of bad shit in the world, and you may find some conscience critter showing up on your shoulder like, “What are you doing to make things better, you punk? Writing? Yeah, that’s won wars.” Art heals. Understand that you are working towards something that can heal people in the middle of this bad shit. Be comforted, and punch that critter in the face.
bohemian.on.rye 