Fuck It. It’s time for me to start writing every single day

No more excuses. Doing nothing is no way to grow.

Donald Guy
3 min readJun 3, 2014

I have known for a long time that there is a great power in the daily habit. There’s a chapter about it in the part of this book that I bothered to read, for example. There are also many whole books about it. Many blogs have been dedicated to someone writing every day and usually, if they last, they eventually have a post about how it was “the best decision they ever made” or some such.

A similar (but different) thing I came across today instilling inspiration was the bio video on this dude’s song-a-day YouTube channel (via this TechCrunch fluff story). I want some of that ju-ju, dang it! And if that dude can write a song & make a video every day, I should certainly be able to write some words. After all, I am pretty sure I was made to do so in 4th grade without too much complaint.

Why writing?

I am a multi-faceted person and one of several talents. But all of them are unpredictable to me and I don’t hone any of them with real consistency. I need to change that. I could pick something else to do all the time, but for now I am picking writing. People’s brains have different natural media, and mine’s seems to be words. I should build on that. Plus some artist named Blake (indeed very possibly this Blake) I met fairly briefly once told me I seemed to him to be a writer. And whose opinion can you trust, if not that of a stranger?

The Plan

So let’s (let’e?) do this! Here’s the plan:

  • To avoid making excuses about where to write, I am likely to default to Medium, but regardless of what medium I use, I will endeavor to tweet about it daily — with a link if its public online and a tweet-length summary if its not
  • There is not a length requirement (cause I am naturally too verbose if anything) and both poetry and prose are allowed.
  • I can stop someday, but I don’t get to decide that for at least one year (June 3, 2015)
  • If I miss a day, that sucks and y’all should feel free to shame me; but it’s most importantly NOT an excuse to quit. Make-up pieces are encouraged in this vein — but I’m making the rules, and its important to forgive yourself sometimes. It’s most important to move forward.
  • I should be able to think of things I want to write about. But if I can’t, I should find a prompt online and do my best to address it. If that sounds too onerous, the fallback shall be to discuss non-trivialy something (a song, a YouTube video, a podcast, etc.) I like or consumed that day —cause while I haven’t been producing every day for a long time, I certainly always consume.
  • It’s okay to repeat topics.
  • The point of the exercise is intrinsic, so if no one reads a piece, that’s fine! But it’s also about creating interesting interactions. So readers, if any, please feel free to talk back at me! (here, on Facebook, via email, twitter, wherever.)

As the owner and operator of my life, I hereby instruct myself to commence this today.

And as a person of significant skepticism and self-doubt, I wish myself luck!

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