I know I said I wanted to write more, and I have! Unfortunately it’s all been in the journal and none of it seems appropriate to transcribe here. (Too navel-gazey, too rambly, too boring. You get the picture.)
I am pleased to report, however, that I began with the 500-words-a-day exercise on 19 April, and to date have ten entries. I seem to have been able to maintain the discipline so far. There has been the odd day where I muddled up my routine and so didn’t manage to write. But these were exceptions.
What seems to be sustaining the effort:
- Using the keyboard instead of pen and paper. It seems sacrilegious to say so, but writing using the keyboard has detached me from the process of forming the letters, contemplating the nib, the quality of the paper, and so on, and I’ve been better able to just focus on the words. Also, the wordprocessor keeps track of the number of words admirably. I still indulge with the pen in my diary, where I note things like the weather, books read and other daily mundanities.
- Not worrying about what I’m going to write. There have been mornings when I’ve woken up and had a topic in my head, but so far most mornings I’ve just sat and typed and let the words come.
- Observing how other writers do it. Thinking about the words they choose. Thinking about how I would describe the scene, object, character, opinion, etc in my own words. Obviously I don’t actually have all that much time to think about this over the course of a day, but when I do have a spare moment I find myself pondering this. It actually has a calming effect at times, for instance, when I think about a colleague’s mystifyingly bad behaviour and start describing it in my head and choosing the words, I of course start to think about their motivations and reasons for doing what they’re doing. This does help lessen my exasperation slightly and has the effect of making me less judgemental and somewhat more inclined to listen to them.
- Thinking about what I’m writing, how I’m expressing my thoughts – and what I’m choosing not to write about, has been interesting.
I’ll keep plodding along and will let you know how I’m going with this, from time to time.