A Daily Writing Habit

A few months back, I found myself in unusual circumstances. I was able to get a lot of writing done. And it led me to schedule many blog posts. I even found my brain more apt to write most of the time – my writing muscles were flexed. Then life kinda happened. Now I’m struggling to find time, make time, to type stuff up.

I need a daily writing habit.

A Writing Tool

I think one reason my mind is writing less is because it’s in learning mode. It wants to take in info and process it all at once. I had heard of a writing tool called Ulysses and decided to finally give it a try. This has me reading a lot of stuff to learn it!

So far, I like Ulysses a lot. Here’s just a few off-hand reasons why:

• It helps me organize my writing better
• It gives me better ways to write, making it easier
• It helps motivate me with writing goals
• It gives me more and better options to publish

I’ll leave it at that for now. It will take quite some time for me to slowly re-wire my 3 pound brain, adjusting my workflow through Ulysses. Prior to this, I wrote all my notes and private journal entries in the Notes app on iOS. And I wrote all my blog drafts directly in the WordPress app. But anything about the blog was separated out to the Notes app. Now that’s changed.

Guess what? Change is hard. Even when for the better. But I’m sure you know that already.

A Writing Time and Place

Last year, I read a book called, Rest. Here’s the link. In it, I found awesome motivation to implement a daily writing habit. Part of that was to slog it out by picking the same time and place each day to just show up with the mind ready to write Shakespeare. Or dreck not worthy of a Facebook post. The point was to just start writing!

So that’s what I did. And it was great! I often got into the flow of writing. Just letting the words pour forth on the digital page. I was in a nice quiet space, a rare time of solitude before anyone else was out of bed, and I had my first cup of coffee. Sounds like a dream, but it was real. Also amazing, I was able to write over 1,000 words a day on some of those days; hitting 500 words was easier.

Guess what happened not long after that? Life hit me. I got sidelined by anxiety. At the time, I was still not far removed from a period of life in which anxiety or panic attacks were frequent. After that, I just couldn’t or didn’t want to attempt early morning writing again.

Well, I’m back at it again, trying to resume such a daily writing habit. Because I need to. I can’t let life just happen. What I mean is, I can’t hope to find time to write. I might as well buy a lottery ticket if I’m hoping to get lucky. No, I need to take time or make time, at least just a little, so I can practice writing.

Writers Write. Right.

The goal is to cultivate a good habit of writing in order to get better at all forms of it, especially blogging. Yes, I have dreams of someday writing a fiction novel! But blogging is, for present lack of creative juices, my bread and butter.

Writers write. Bloggers blog.

So…I’ve got a good tool, I’m gonna take time, and I’ve got a place to write.

Let’s see how it goes!

Am I missing anything I need to write more or better? What about something like Grammarly? Would you say my blogging has a “voice?”