Who says we have to wait until New Year’s to make resolutions?
This may be foolish of me, and I may not be able to do it, but I’m resolving to write a blog post every day this month.
It may be a foolish resolution because I already have a lot on my hands. I am coming to the end of my real estate project, but I have two non-fiction manuscripts that need doing, another new non-fiction project, and more work to be assigned by the broker. This is over and above whatever time I can borrow to work on my fiction, or on Transit Toronto, or to post to the Kitchener Post (the latest column is now out and can be seen here).
But I’ve been disappointed at the slower pace my blog has taken over the past year or so. I haven’t written as much as I used to, and the motivation to write hasn’t come nearly so easily. I can’t help but feel that the readership has dropped, and when I do write, I’m talking to a bit of a vacuum.
However, I didn’t start this blog to gain an audience. I started this blog because I was curious, and because it was an opportunity to just sit down and write. It was like a diary or a writers’ notebook that I’d opened up to the general public. And I think that it helped make my writing better.
Remember the advice that writers give to others who ask how to get their writing published is to “write, write, write!” While I’ve been doing as much writing as I’ve been doing at any time in my life, I feel that it has gotten pretty focused, and I need something freeform so that I don’t get stuck in a rut. Indeed, exercising my mind so it doesn’t just slip into a particular mode of writing will help those other modes of writing, I think.
I can’t promise that every post I post in February will be as long or as well thought out as the last post of January. I can’t even promise that I’ll be able to keep up the pace, but I aim to try. I need to shake myself up. Consider this my own personal, blog-related, not-necessarily-fiction NaNoWriMo. Except in February.
Which would make this month’s project, what? PerBloWriMo? I’ll get back to you on that.