July is almost over, and so is my month-long challenge. I’m not going to lie; I’m ready for this challenge to be done because it is not something I could maintain in the long run. To recap, I have been posting a new blog post every day for the month of July, as it was a goal of mine to do at least one month and also to push myself as a writer. Everything included in this post will be observations with the intent to do better.
I’m a bad news first, good news second type of girl. (i.e., not well)
I’m someone who likes getting bad news first and then the good news. Not that there’s any bad news here. It’s simply that the month is not going well. Sure, I’ve been posting every day to this site, and I have plenty of drafts to choose from from my daily writing sessions. Those are both good, even great things. But I’m also questioning what I’ve been writing and what I’ll be writing in the future. An existential crisis, if you will. Which isn’t what I would want, and yet it’s okay because I’m still learning and growing.
I didn’t organize my content topics, so, at least to my eyes, they don’t seem aligned
One thing that I didn’t do right was that I didn’t organize my content topics. Other than a handful of times when I was writing for a specific purpose (both were different challenges or mini-series), I wrote whatever I felt like. And there’s nothing wrong with that. It’s my site, so why shouldn’t I write what I want? My problem is that I don’t seem to have a central focus, so if I write about whatever I want, whenever I want,
Most days have gone well, but some days I’ve struggled
Looking back, most days have gone well. There were still some days where I struggled, but they were the exception, not the norm. I’m okay with the fact that there are struggle days, it would probably give me a big head if “every day” was an easy breezy writing day. There’s also growth in the struggle, since I can sometimes figure out what went wrong with my inability to write, and learn from that.
Outlining has helped TREMENDOUSLY
Outlining has helped me so much. I’ve actually been writing a lot better because of them. Even if the outlines aren’t always the best, having them available and filling in the sections like a puzzle works so much better than before. I’ve been editing and posting a few of my older drafts recently. These were ones from before I started using outlines, which made it harder to edit, because I had to figure out where the sections would start and end, and what to include as segment headings. So much easier now that I wish I had thought of it sooner.
It’s given me a lot of insight into the wrongs and rights
Writing every day has given me a lot of insights into the wrongs and rights I’ve been doing. I would never have paid attention to the little things like I do now if I wasn’t writing every day. Even just the act of writing every day gives me more ideas of what I need to fix, or even to pay better attention to when I don’t feel like writing but write anyway. I want to see if that will be the right thing to say. It
Writing is a skill and an art, and one that needs to be practiced to improve. After hearing that for years, I’m only now putting in the effort to follow that statement. Showing up to write even on days when it’s not working, It’s really working, and I want to see if I can apply that to other areas as well. But I’m so proud of how far I’ve come since starting back in April. Every day I’m putting in the work, and learning step by step what I need to improve so that I can be a better writer.
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