How I made Writing a Habit
#fiftyfivewords
There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed (Ernest Hemingway)
Back at the beginning of May, I set myself a writing challenge.
I failed.
I failed spectacularly.
It wasn’t even a hard challenge — write, every day, for 21 days. Three weeks. Easy peasy. Just sit and write. No problem.
OK. Big problem. One day … literally, one day … that is how long my period of uninterrupted ‘look-at-me-I-am-a-writer’ phase lasted.
So, how could I make it a habit that I would stick to? They say it takes 21 days to create a habit … and 90 days to embed it into your lifestyle. I needed to get back on the horse. Have another go. Well, I didn’t ‘need’ to. I wanted to.
So, when I turned 55 on 1 June, I started a writing challenge.
Thoughts and ideas in 55 words, for 55 days.
Simple
This time, I told people that I was doing it. I committed to posting my words, every day. I wrote in Medium and shared on Twitter and Instagram. Every day. Without fail. For fifty five days.
What did I learn by taking on a self-created writing challenge?
- I loved doing it. I liked the rhythm; I relished the sense of expectation from a group of readers who really seemed to connect with the words.
- I relish the moments when the words connect with people. I write for myself, but there is a special pleasure in sharing them. Even if only one person is touched by the words, or the thought behind them, or the memories they trigger, it has been worth sharing.
- My mind works well with word constraints. Short and sharp; well turned phrases to keep the word count taut. You can get a lot across in very few words. Each vignette feels like a trigger for a longer piece of work.
- It helped that I knew how long the challenge was going to last. Fifty five days; not too long to get bored; long enough to be challenging; about the right length to keep folk’s attention.
- I remembered that it doesn’t matter how good the words are, it is the pictures that grab folk’s attention on Instagram. No great shock there; it is a visual social media channel.
So, what next?
Time for another challenge … something fixed in time and scope to ensure that I commit to it, and push through to the end. Something that builds on the work I’ve done during the #fiftyfivewords challenge.
Right in the middle of the 55 words for 55 days sequence, I wrote for 10 days in a row about the 10 principles of The Encouragement Manifesto. I am well-overdue writing something longer, more considered, about the principles. So, a new challenge. Ten essays. One for each of the principles — a couple a week should see them all published by the end of August … if I just stop talking about and get on with writing about it.
Ready, steady … let’s write.
