I've been in one of my biggest creative slumps recently. Instagram seems to be on the decline (and I never really liked posting there to begin with). Editing videos takes more time and energy than I can seem to muster. Even getting out of the house is a bigger struggle than I'm used to.
I thought I would come back from Havasupai feeling refreshed and ready to pump out content related to it, pushing me out of my recent slump. Instead I'm feeling more drained and questioning so many things about my life.
When I hit these low moments, the one thing my soul craves is to write. I'm not sure exactly where it comes from. I've always had an easier time putting thoughts onto paper (or screen) in written form than I do speaking or through other mediums. Sometimes a good brain dump into a blog post is all it takes to get myself back into a state of momentum and feeling good about putting ideas out into the universe.
Maybe it's the fact that my blog is the most private public forum I use (versus Instagram and YouTube where more people see what I post). Maybe it's because the first "real" job I ever dreamt of as a kid was being an author. Thanks to Mr. Deuker for inspiring me in this way!
Either way, I've decided to start a little challenge for myself and get into the habit of writing consistently. Usually I only pull out the metaphorical pen when inspiration strikes and I have a thought I want to solidify and get out. I always see writers talking about the importance of writing consistenly, even -- and especially -- when they don't want to. I'm no writer really, but I'm hoping the same approach will unstuck my mental glue and get me primed for the new year.
I've chosen an unintimidating 300 words/day goal, knowing that some days I will have plenty to drawl on about and others I will be radio silent. Starting today, I'm working toward an overall goal of 109,500 words by the end of 2024. Sounds lofty. It's 300 words for 365 days. That gives me a freebie for the leap year with 366 days and a solid month headstart.
I've been searching high and low for a good word tracking app that can see how much I'm writing across Chrome and my Day One app, but am still at a loss. I guess for now I'll be using the wordgoal app and manually inputting my daily writing numbers.
I am also using a word counter app installed to my mac that allows me to easily highlight a text and see the number of sentences, words, and characters. Opening the app pops up a small square window that shows your numbers. It's pretty non-intrusive so far and the most seemless way I have found to do this. If you're interested, it's called "Word-Counter" and was created by Tamas Iuliu. It's $1.99 in the app store. I'll give an update later on how it ends up working for me.
These musings will mostly live here on the blog. Some may end up being private/unposted, but I'll share the random ramblings that I don't mind having eyes on.
If you're curious to see how my writing challenge goes or whether it sparks more creativity in the rest of my life and content creation, feel free to follow along. I have not an inkling what I'll write about all these days, so we'll find that out together. As an avid reader and content consumer, I'm hoping this flips the balance for me and I end up creating more than I consume. I'm sure my writing skills will increase dramatically if I stick this out and that's something I'm really looking foward to.
I hope you had a wonderful Thanksgiving and November. How is the holiday season already upon us? It's my favorite time to bolster habits before New Year's Day and I'm already feeling more inspired after today's writing.
695 words down and 108,805 more to go. I'll see you (hopefully tomorrow) for more ramblings.
Happy adventuring,
A
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