Nights like tonight are really hard for me to get a Thing-a-Day post out because after fighting against the 11th hour to get my humor column for the week done, I frankly just have no words left that I feel are worthwhile to talk about in this space…
As this project has sort of evolved over the last several months since I started it back in February, I’ve gone back and forth on whether I truly want to push myself to post something every single day, or if I want to make it ok to take the occasional break like when I’ve already spent the entire day hammering away at other writing or maybe when I haven’t had a chance to really do anything creative at all because it’s just been a grind of a day that I’ll be happy to put behind me.
The more I think about it, though, I almost think that part of the perks of daily blogging, if you will, is that by “forcing yourself to write” during those times when you really don’t want to, it makes you a better writer … even if you’re just writing gibberish or brain dumping kind of like I am right now. All of the classic excuses, such as being too busy or not feeling inspired or just being tired are all like hurdles for a writer to overcome, and the better you get at defeating each of those excuses, naturally the better writer you’re going to be.
It’s kind of like that classic Stephen King quote about inspiration:
“Amateurs sit and wait for inspiration – the rest of us just get up and go to work.”
I guess sometimes it’s not even so much about what you write, but simply the fact that you sat down and pushed buttons on the keyboard and did the work in the first place. Which makes sense because I never claimed that Thing-a-Day in particular was necessarily going to be my magnum opus by any stretch of the imagination. If anything, it’s an extension of my blog and I’m already very lax about what I write there, so in a way it kind of fits that more random forms of free expression fit over here in this space that can literally change every day of the week.
That freedom aspect is another interesting perspective that come to think of it is also worth talking about, but for the sake of this post I think I’ve helped to make up my own mind here in the last 423 or so-ish words!
The goal with writing something every single day like I’m trying to do here isn’t to recreate Shakespeare or crank out the laughs at an unconscionable flow. Instead I’m here to challenge myself creatively to come up with something to post, even on busy days and even on days when I’m feeling blank…
…because that way when I am hard at work writing The Great American Novel, I shouldn’t have to worry about those pesky obstacles standing in my way over there, either. 😉