The Most Important Thing I Learned in 2012

Okay, a piece of advice: if you start a blog about writing and then you really ought to write on it, if only when something really cool happens in your writing life. If you don’t you’ll end up writing about it months later…like me.

In any case, something cool happened to me last year:

 You know my last post? No? Not important, it was just about a challenge I set myself…and then discarded the next day. But I had a good reason! Really I did, it’s called NaNoWriMo, National Novel Writing Month. If you’ve never heard of it before you really should go check it out. NaNoWriMo is a challenge to write 50,000 words of a novel in one month. It is held during November and is host to writers from all around the world.

I started late; I didn’t even find out about it until November 4^th, I signed up that day in some crazy, daring, fit. I don’t do things like this you see, I’m not that impulsive, not that brave. But on that Sunday afternoon I committed myself to writing more then I had ever written before. And I did it. 50,000 words, 26 days, 1 story, and me.

I learned that month that I can write, even when I don’t think I have anything to say. Too often I’ve waited until something really inspires to write; when that’s done I go find a book to read. Forget about the second chapter, I’ll get it another day. We all know how that ends. I haven’t done very much since November. That story’s not even finished, 50,000 words is a lot but it still only got me about half way through. I’m notoriously un-self motivated you see. I know that if I sit down and force myself to crank out some words I will be able to. They might even be worth reading.

Today I’m sitting down and writing a blog post, it’s not a real big thing, it’s not a novel for instance,  but it’s something. That’s all it takes I suppose, a little something every day. In November it was about 1650+ words a day. I don’t think I’ll be keeping that goal but I do know that I need to make a goal of some sort, now that I know that I can write I just have to make myself do it. 

But how much you write isn't as important as making yourself write. You see that's what I learned last year: I can write, but the catch is that I have to sit down and do it. There is no other way to become a writer, you have to write: Write when you feel like there is too much to say and you can't type fast enough. But too, Write when your tired, when you don't know what to say, when you don't think you can. It'll be hard sometimes, but in the end, it'll be worth it.