It is a confessional post today so bear with me, please.
Yesterday marked the end of a personal challenge I set for myself, to send a post out every day for a month. I nailed it!
Many months ago, I set myself a similar challenge, to share something every day, but failed. At that time I was aiming for 200 to 500 words only, in a rambling style. This time I averaged 1000 words per post and wrote magazine style articles. I am really pleased with myself.
Why it was so important to meet this challenge?
It is the start of my blogging life in the true sense (I am not counting previous attempts here), and I want to make sure that I set myself a routine to write, research, review and publish regularly. There were days when I didn’t get any time during the day, on those days I stayed up very late finishing the posts. There were days when my eyes hurt so much (I have chronic dry eyes) but I persisted. I had to create these memories so when in the future I feel like slacking, I have this positive experience to draw from. If I could do it then, I can do it now. It is very important to have examples from our own past to motivate ourselves.
Another reason I set this challenge up was to accelerate my learning. The more I wrote the easier it became. I learned how to research a topic, how to dig out my own opinion, how to present it in a simple way and most importantly how to find topics that I though will interest you as much as they interest me. Your comments showed me I was hitting the nail sometimes. Other times I was not so sure. Bloggers rely on their readers to direct them to what they should write. You are the reason I write. I want to contact you and want to know what is worrying you. How can I help? Is there any topic you would like my research and present my views? I would like to know your views too. So please leave me comments, however small.
I really enjoyed writing articles on my travels. Every traveler notices different things when they visit a new place. I hope you learned something new from my account. Writing about them doubled my enjoyment of traveling because I was paying more attention to everything. Besides, it engaged my family members too, prompting me to take pictures, collecting brochures and proofreading posts.
Where to from here?
I am in blogging for a long haul. I love this platform. It is the most appropriate platform for a writer where you can not only practice your craft but share your learning with others and build a community of shared interests. Writing, which is a very solitary activity otherwise, becomes a medium to win friends. And I believe we all need more like-minded friends regardless of the distance.
I have discovered that the most productive way to work form me is to have monthly goals. I get too many ideas. As the proverb goes, time to act on an idea is while it is still hot, I get too much excited and want to work on all of them straightaway. The compromise I have made is to stick with an idea at least a month. Hence monthly projects.
My next project is going to be from 15 July – 15 August (for some reason my project month is starting halfway through calendar months) and it is going to be working on my novel. I started it five years ago and intended to finish it this year so that I can start the next one in January next year. I haven’t touched it for eighteen months now. It is time I bring its characters out of their exile.
I will still be publishing regularly, at least three times a week, more if I find something interesting that can’t wait. I thank my stars every day having born at a time in history when so much is at our fingertips, literary.
By the way, I have profiled myself based on Nina Katchadourian art exercise I introduced in my yesterday’s post How to use your inflight time to create art? Here are three piles of books addressing three traits of myself: learning, traveling and becoming new me.
I hope you will also give it a go.
Next post on Wednesday
PS: I am working on the Patagonia post I promised in Lake District – Chile and Argentina post.