365 Days of Writing

Writing was always something that I wanted to get more involved in my day to
day life. Early last year, I started a blog and had some posts up, but it was
nothing more than that just random posts at random times.I tried to start the
habit of blogging every day for 30 days. I would write a blog post every night
on a topic I was thinking about or something I was working on. What ended up
happening was about 20 poorly written, not even 500-word posts and about 10
with some value to them.It was a good way to get over being scared of posting
articles as every day I had to hit "Publish" no matter what. That was the best
take away from that activity, but the quality was jumbled and the problem
still remained it was a random assortment of thoughts. Morning PagesI still
wanted to write. I actually enjoyed the process of writing and the process of
exploring ideas. But, I needed to do something to help that along and I needed
to do something that would help me get better and more comfortable with
writing and exploring my own ideas.I was listening to a podcast talking about
the concept of morning pages. The idea is every morning you write three
handwritten pages with no prompt and no guidance, just start writing."Three
pages of stream of consciousness writing done before the day begins"I loved
the concept but I had some problems. I didn't like longhand because this was
something that I thought I might want to go back and look at if I had a good
idea or something that I wanted to grow on and expand.I decided to find a
simple app that I could write in plain text, was full screen to avoid
distractions, and would allow me to search through all of the stuff I wrote. I
wasn't sure what was going to come out of it. The Results Were Not at All What
I ImaginedI didn't know what to expect from this. I thought there would be
amazing ideas flowing. I would have some great business ideas or some book
idea and I would be off to the races. I didn't think that it would become a
pseudo therapy session for me. At times, it was a space where I was able to
work out problems. It was a place where I could vent about the struggles that
I had. It was a place where I would set goals for the month, the day, and the
week.There were many ideas coming out as well. But, all of this other stuff
happened. When you turn off the world and allow yourself the time and space to
actually write down what is on your mind, the results were remarkable.This
wasn't without its struggles. Some of the early days, the writing was nothing
interesting, "I am tired. Why do I wake up every morning and do this?" There
were some days where I was thankful for hot water and coffee and just wanted
to talk about the joys of a good show. It Made Me HungryI felt like I was in a
creative rut and that is why I wanted to start doing this. But, something
happened once I got into my rhythm about three months in.I wanted more. I
wanted to share more. I wanted to start making some of my other creative
projects. I got hungry for more.Writing every morning unleashed the juices. It
got me ready to take on the day. It got me set up to tackle some of the other
problems and goals on my list.What it did was allow me to start and get an
easy win, which in turn allowed me to setup my mind to start completing. What
Is NextThe daily routine was something that has helped me in other ways. I
don't see a reason to stop or change the practice. The benefits were visible.
If I didn't write in the morning on certain days, I felt like something was
missing. It felt like I was on a cloud for the whole day.Another thing that
this practice trigged was the development of more good habits. I tried to
break things I wanted to do down into smaller chunks. I was able to get into
the habit of mediation, tackle being a vegetarian, and even read more.I
thought about stopping and seeing what happened. But, I enjoy it too much and
I didn't want to go back to being without it. I think that I might use it to
experiment more with my writing, trying things such as writing more fiction
and getting more comfortable with writing dialogue.If you have something that
you want to try, get it into your day or your routine. Break it down and try
to do it for thirty days. It is the perfect amount of time to see how it will
work with your life and allow you to make adjustments from there.If you love
experimenting with and wanting to try new things, this is a practice that
could change you and allow you to get more done.