Do you often find it hard to stick to your writing plan? How often do “important tasks” distract you and pull you away from your deeper purpose? Fantasy football sounds like a hoot, but if it is keeping you from writing the book that has been nagging at you for five years, then it is not a hobby, but a distraction.
With the Internet, and especially social media, you can feel busy without getting anything done. The irony is that people make art to feel connected, but can now accomplish that feeling through Facebook, Instagram, X formerly known as Twitter, etc. The connection that you receive through social media, however, is transient. It is junk food. You can eat it all day long, and experience the immediate gratification of those “likes,” yet not feel any closer to knowing yourself or others.
Or . . . You can shut yourself away in a room for hours on end, pouring your thoughts and ideas onto the page, with no guarantee that anyone will ever read a word of it. Why would anyone choose the latter? Who wouldn’t choose the gratification of social media over that?
My friend, the author Eric Miles Williamson, says, “I hate writing. I just hate the feeling of not writing even more.”
When setting your writing plan, remember we are all here to fulfill a purpose. Whether you do or not is up to you. When you approach your creative work as a practice, and begin to celebrate your progress, you can often be surprised by the result. This is your time. The journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step. Let’s begin.
Learn more about marrying the wildness of your imagination to the rigor of structure in The 90-Day Novel, The 90-Day Memoir, or The 90-Day Screenplay workshops.
