When I wrote this draft, I had been writing daily for almost two months. Specifically 53 days, if going by my videos on TikTok. At the time of my publishing this, so today, I had posted my 87th video on TikTok the night before. And I’m so proud of myself for doing that, for continuing to maintain my streak. I am so proud. Because it’s not something I’ve ever been able to do before. But I love, oh, how I love seeing the videos add up.
However.
HOWEVER.
In writing daily, I have yet to take the time to plan out what I will be writing every day. Even almost 100 days in, I still haven’t done that. That’s a mix of:
- me procrastinating sitting down and mapping out my content schedule, and
- me being lazy because I don’t want to have to worry about the word count math if I were to work on one project and then continue it on another day. Ugh. Math.
But I need to change up my system sooner rather than later because what I’m doing right now is not working. It’s quite a mess. I can feel how wrong this system is for me. Because I write whatever topic comes to mind, some days are better than others. And even on good days (unless they are really good days), there usually still comes a point when I am forcing the words out in order to continue writing until the time clock ends.
I don’t try to meet a specific word count in my sessions.
Because I write daily, I know that I am writing more than ever before. And because there is that consistency, I don’t feel the pressure to be pumping out a certain amount of words each day. However, I like to get at least 600 words a day since I write for an hour most days.
When I wrote this, I was at 18:30 on the clock and a little over 320 on the word count. I would not have been happy with the day’s session if I had stopped right then.
Now there are two things I could do to fix this and reach a word count I am happy with:
- I continue writing about whatever topic I am on. That can work, if the topic is a good one.
- If the topic is not a good one (which happens increasingly so, when I’m writing about whatever comes to mind), then there comes a point where I start writing whatever. I do take advantage of the fact that everything I write during a session is a first draft. It helps my mindset, and I do think I’m getting better at just getting things down instead of worrying about finding the right words.
But neither of these options is effective in the long run. The former is weak, at best, since it depends on the topic and I don’t have a system in place yet to make sure I have better topics available instead of coming up with them off the top of my head. It’s not the best way to go about things, but it’s also easy to not have to worry about them.
But wait, that’s a lie. Because while it “makes it easier” to dive in and write, that is, in fact, an illusion.
Yes, that is what I live in. An illusion or a delusion, you take your pick. I present this false image to myself so that I don’t have to put a little extra work ahead of time, even if the extra work would mean that I may do better in the long run.
I’m not good at coming up with topics.
I never have been, at least not about my writing. I could come up with many topics for specific niche blogs and subjects, but not for mine.
The other illusion I work under is that I can edit anything out. I do spend time editing my posts, though I tend to procrastinate a bit to be able to make sure I have content ready for my website. But the fact that I will be editing my pieces before publishing them is a double-edged sword. It allows me to write freely, freeing myself from the past years of tormenting perfectionism.
At the same time, if I spend more time in writing nonsense, stream-of-conscious thought in order to finish out the timer, then it doesn’t give me much to edit. That is, I don’t have much besides the nonsense, so in the end I would probably be writing a new piece instead of being able to use what I have.
I believe I have said before that at the end of July that I would be working on planning out my content, and if I haven’t said that, well, this is me saying it now. It’s such a great learning curve that I am going through, but it works well.
Silly note: Because I film my writing session, my writing can get a little weird. I don’t film the entire thing, only snippets, and often I end up writing “I wasn’t” or something of the nature because it’s easy. But I’ve lost count of how often I do so. I should also note that I only do that because
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