One Page a Day

I’m not usually one to sign up for writing “challenges.” Externally imposed deadlines or goals always seem so … artificial.

But, then … Weronika Janczuk made an excellent point.

We discussed mind tricks for a little while, and the prime example included the “page-a-day” trick. Instead of giving yourself a word count goal or a time goal, all you owe yourself is to write a page a day. The trick here is that you don’t psyche yourself out. And, if the writing comes easily, you’ll end up writing twenty pages before you know it.
And what’s the worst case scenario? You spend one year writing a novel. Typical novels tend to be 350 double-spaced pages or fewer (12 point font, Times). I’ve blogged about the importance of patience, and here’s a way to do multiple things at once: Learn to be patient. Train your discipline. Write good pages. Think about structure and organization day in and day out.

She intrigued me.

Well, Weronika is an intriguing person to begin with, what with still being in high school (for a few more weeks) and having a finished novel. A good one, I hear. I wish I’d had her kind of drive when I was a teenager.

I’m getting off-track.

The POINT I’m endeavoring to make is that it doesn’t actually matter what kind of writing you do.

The POINT is to do it every day.

It’s not about the quantity. It’s not about large, staggering chunks of time in front of your computer screen.

It doesn’t have to be HARD.

But if you sit down every day and write a page, or a blog post, or an article, or whatever it is that you write, even 100 words a day is going to add up … especially when you let yourself relax into it and just let the words flow.

Because, every writer can tell you, the hardest part is SITTING DOWN AND STARTING.