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WriteMarch: A Month’s Writing Ritual Comes to a Close

Lessons and Reflections on Writing Daily during a Pandemic

On February 7, I purchased the domain writemarch.com (not yet in service). When I decided to launch a personal challenge to write every day in March, I had no idea we’d find ourselves in an “unprecedented” global pandemic. If I had known, I wouldn’t have pursued the project.

Today is the final day of March. It’s fitting to reflect on where I started and what I learned. I began the challenge to help me get out of my head. I wanted to overcome a fear reflex that sometimes prevents me from putting words to paper or pixels.

A week in, I wrote about my reflections up until that point. In that post, I focused a lot on what could have made the writing project more perfect: launching the website first, following an optimal writing ritual, creating visuals instead of mostly using stock art, etc. I was compassionate to myself and celebrated showing up to write on the days where my energy or emotions weren’t up for the task. In the end, it was more important that I honored my commitment than anything else.

As I reflect, I notice the following:

• The magic is in showing up no matter what. That was even more true when I was tired, which frankly was every day with the weight of the ‘rona.
• I didn’t promote my posts though I did share a few directly to introduce friends to virtual workshops, Icebreaker, and Crazy 8’s. I didn’t want to market my writing because I was curious how the views/comments/claps would play out on their own.
• Content I considered more substantive or interesting, like the above, received far fewer views than a rant about rice in burritos (3.7K views and counting).
• How I used the commitment and time highlights possibilities to use the practice to create more outputs, improve my life, and have an impact on others.
• I was surprised by what came out of an open, stream of consciousness style of writing. This was all I could seem to manage during a time of bad news. It was hard to write, let alone plan. I intended to develop an optimal writing ritual that began with planning the prior evening, writing in the morning, and ending in the evening with the actual writing. I believe the schedule would have strengthened my writing and may attempt the process in the future.
• Freedom from a set format and attention to my energy levels took me on unimaginable writing journeys. I came into the project with a brainstormed a list of topics, but my energy levels encouraged me to explore more creative concepts. Poetry made up a surprisingly high percentage of what I published.
• Several people I told about WriteMarch called my project brave and inspiring. It felt awkward to receive the positive feedback. That said, I hope what was inspiring to them pushes them in brave directions.

What’s next? I want to create website to archive the project and maybe another site to encourage people to do their own WriteMonth. In the meantime, I’m listing all of the posts here:

1. WriteMarch: Kicking off a Writing Ritual
2. Making Your Workshop or Meeting Virtual When the Coronavirus Is Ruining Everything: Part 1
3. Haiku to Celebrate CamelCase
4. How to Facilitate a Remote Workshop or Meeting (If You Weren’t before the Coronavirus): Part 2 — Free resources!
5. How I Developed a Journal Habit that Sticks
6. Engagement Ring Alternatives and Flipping the Script
7. Ode to Paint Pens…or How I Transformed a Boring Away Suitcase
8. My WriteMarch Commitment: Lessons on a Daily Practice
9. A Few Frameworks I’ve Learned on How to Give Feedback
10. Rice Doesn’t Belong in a Burrito
11. What Big Bird, Will Ferrell, and Don Draper Taught Me about Writing New Yorker Cartoon Captions
12. Dinner and a Movie Doesn’t Have to Be Boring: Theme Nights to the Rescue!
13. Fortune Cookie, Writer’s Block
14. Three Sentence Story: The Atomic Level of Storytelling
15. Choose the Right
16. Virtual Museum Stroll with Bryan Stevenson and Roxane Gay
17. Remote Hugs: Physical Care Packages in a Virtual World
18. Contributing to OpenIDEO’s COVID-19 Communication Inspiration Challenge: 24 Hour Sprint
19. How to Write Blackout Poetry during a Pandemic
20. Six-Word Memoirs, Coping with COVID
21. A Haiku Alternative: How to Write Tanka Poetry
22. 100 Poetry Forms to Prepare You for NaPoWriMo or Poem a Day Challenges
23. 10 Random Wikipedia Articles to Escape the News
24. Social Distancing Is Making Distance Social
25. Music Videos I Want to Work into My More-Fun-than-Zoom Calls
26. Icebreaker App Helps You Host Fun Virtual Conversation Games and Break Everyone out of a Zoom Rut
27. You Would Have Never Guessed My Favorite Color
28. The Privilege of Partnership: Recognizing the Benefits of Being in a Healthy Relationship
29. Leftovers Recombination: How to Turn Leftovers into a New Meal
30. Twisting the Crazy Eights: Generating Better Ideas through Constraints
31. WriteMarch: A Month’s Writing Ritual Comes to a Close [You are here!]

This post is part of my WriteMarch series, a commitment to write daily for a month.