“Drop by drop is the water pot filled.” –Buddha
My writing, since I retired, is a drop here and a drop there. There’s so much I want to write, I feel overwhelmed and stuck-in-the-mud. Waddling around aimlessly in this mudhole has become a bad habit.
During my career as a fundraising professional, I wrote for my job - newsletters, proposals, grants, strategic plans, annual reports, cases for support, press releases, and social media. Now that I'm newly retired, I have the freedom to write what I want, but how do I get unstuck from the mudhole?
So I searched Google for "habit," and found tons of information from people like Stephen R. Covey, Malcolm Gladwell, Twyla Tharp, Thich Nhat Hanh, Mark Twain, Oprah, James Clear, and more. They all have good ideas for building habits that can make life more productive. My takeaway from their advice helped me recognize my bad habits and create better habits.Here’s the bad habits I want to stop:
- Finding excuses to delay writing – i.e. – go to the mailbox, make guacamole, get caught up in TikTok or Pinterest, call my daughter. I can do these things later.
- Lack of focus when writing. I skip between two blogs, two Etsy stores, Linkdin, and my Journal.
- Sitting too long at one time at the computer.
- Not drinking enough water.
Last week I started practicing new, much better habits:
- Write from 9:00 AM to 11:00 AM, and 1:00 PM to 3:00 PM, Monday thru Friday.
- Keep a running list of everything and everywhere I want to write. Review it every day, prioritize, and make changes as needed.
- While writing, drink water, stand up and move every 30 minutes.
- Sit up straight. (I tend to hunch over.)
- When time is up, clean up my desk and get it ready for tomorrow. Be ready to start without wasting time looking for cords, chargers, folders or books I’ll need.
- Make time Saturday and/or Sunday to read fiction.
Britannica Dictionary’s definition of HABIT: 1. a usual way of behaving: 2. something a person does often in a regular and repeated way.
Changing my usual way of behaving and writing often in a regular and repeated way is helping me feel more focused and less stuck-in-the-mud. And, I’m making progress in my writing skills and stockpile.
Do you have any advice for changing habits? What are your successful writing habits? Thanks for sharing!
What do you do with your old journals? We had a lively discussion on this topic at our writer’s group meeting in December. Should we keep them? Hide them? Save them for all posterity or burn them? There were as many opinions and options as there were people in the group:
Here in the States, we just celebrated Thanksgiving Day. It’s a busy week of grocery shopping, cooking, cleaning, and visitors. My sister, her four adult children and their children came for the week. We had so much fun! But it was a challenge to write for 10 minutes every day with so much company. And, in the midst of all the activities, I got a great idea for a fictional character and a scene for a book or short story. So I had to write! I had to squeeze in 10 minutes between the cooking, shopping, playing, talking, visiting, etc. You can too:
Today is Sunday. For me, a day of rest and retrospect. A day to re-fuel my inner strength to face the week ahead. It’s a popular thing to write a gratitude list every day as a way to center your spirit. But my gratitude list has become repetitive. Every second of every day, I’m grateful for my family, my husband, my friends, my health, home, brains, beauty, freedom. That list is carved in stone and I can refer to it every day. So now I write, “I love it when….”
Do you prefer to write by hand with pen on paper or on a keyboard? Does it affect your creativity? We had this discussion at our last Use Your Words writers group meeting. We were talking about writing every day – some like to write in a journaI while others prefer the keyboard.
Write for 10 Minutes 
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