The second day

For the second time, I have missed a day of writing. The first time, I had the excuses of sickness and a friend's birthday, and I chose to ignore those things, because I knew that I should have planned better and written at times where there was less to distract me. Yesterday, I had no such excuses. I simply did not write, and it did not occur to me that I had let this happen until I dreamed about it over the night. I woke up far too late to do anything about it, and it frustrated me to no end. I should have written, and I did not. That, to me, is unacceptable.

They say that if you do something for something like three months straight than it becomes a habit. I have written blog posts for that twice over, and I still manage to forget about my writing. This last streak lasted me for over a hundred days, and I still managed to forget about my writing. I'm inclined to blame this on the fact that I all too often write late at night, which means that when things happen at night, it becomes more difficult for me to write.

My situation has changed recently, however, and now that this has happened I feel more compelled than ever to do something about it. I don't want to feel this kind of frustration again, and it is fortunately the kind of frustration that I can do something about. I plan to make myself write earlier in the day, preferably as early as I can, though the fact that I have been up for more than three hours before writing this particular post shows that even with some determination it will take a good deal of work.

Though no one will see it for some time, this also has made me more compelled to work on writing outside of this blog. The entire purpose of the blog was to make me practice my writing so that I would be better for writing books. Though it has been a slow progress, I would like to believe in some way that this has been successful, but I also have not worked on writing a book in a long time. This frustration I am feeling after having failed to write makes me not only frustrated but angry that I have done the same to my book writing. I have put it off for far too long. It is well past time for me to get back to work on that which got me into writing in the first place, and that which is my ultimate goal.

Unlike my blog, book writing is something that you can't put a numerical value on. It's not something I can say "I'm going to write this much of it each day" about. Each scene has to be treated on its own. Each scene can last from anywhere to a hundred words to well over a thousand. Even on the blog, there have been some posts that I have made short because I felt that trying to stretch them any farther would be taking away from that story. Others have gone on far past my five hundred word goal, and I felt that I could have taken them farther still.

I don't know how long it will take me to finish a book. Not even the rough draft. By the time I get to the end of one draft of it, I may not like how it started any more. This may lead to rewrites after rewrites after rewrites. And that's ok. I've only done one rewrite here on the blog, but I feel that the second version was definitely better than the first. And that's all that I can hope for. That I get better. Because the better I get, and the more I write, the closer I get to having a full product that I can be proud of. And that's something that I have dreamed about ever since I learned to write in the first place.

So I have to start my count over. Alright. It'll take a while, but I'll get back to 100 blog posts without stopping. And hopefully I'll get even farther. Maybe I'll only get to 150, but I'll keep going. And hopefully in that time I will get better yet. And maybe I'll be able to get some solid work in on a book in that time. Maybe this frustration is just what I needed to get myself kickstarted on the things that are really important.

I know these are the kinds of posts people probably aren't interested in. I know I wouldn't be. I'd be here for the fiction. I am here for the fiction. But sometimes it pays off to take a look at what it is I'm doing. To state my goals, so they aren't just things that are in my head, but things that someone can turn to me and say, "Hey, how has that thing you're working towards been going?" That was half the reason I started this, after all.

If you've read anything that I've written, than I thank you. Lord knows that nothing I've put on here has been amazing, but it's been something I've made, so if you've enjoyed any of it to any capacity, than that's all I can hope for. Here's hoping there isn't a third missed day.