Writing and the challenges

For someone that tries to write every day there are going to be challenge and some of the challenges is just getting the words down so that someone else can understand the feelings and thoughts that you are dealing with. It doesn’t have to be any major it is just sitting down and being able to write about the various thoughts and feelings. 

This evening, I was listening to a bunch of songs about feelings and being there and understanding what someone else is going through, but we also have to think about what we are going through at the same time because we might be able to be there for someone else but we also need to be there for ourselves.

As I am sitting here trying to get a bunch of thoughts, ideas and feelings out of my head, I know that there are a bunch of others that are trying to do the exact same thing and it can be such a challenge. Being able to sit down and just write and not let what anyone else says get in the way can be such a challenge and I know that I have done just that. I let some simple get in the way of me being able to write but I am now working on getting back to the writing that makes me happy.

When you are a writer and you want to write because that is what makes you happy you need to understand that even if someone says something that you think might be negative you need to step back and think about what the person might be saying. The person might be surprised at the amount of writing that you are able to accomplish, and they just messed up what they are trying to say. You also have to accept that a person might be jealous of what you are able to accomplish on a daily or weekly basis and you just need to accept that and move forward.

There are a lot of challenges that a writer needs to deal with and being able to accept the various comments either good or bad doesn’t matter because as a writer we need to do what makes us happy and if you let someone else’s comment stop you from writing that is a major problem. I know that I started to let a comment stop me from writing like I did before but after a simple conversation I have learned that the comments came out the wrong way and this person is encouraging me to write because that is what makes me happy.

Why I write

Why do I write is very simple and that is because I love writing about the different things that are going on in our life. Of course, some of the blogs that I write are not entirely non-fiction, but I try and give the feeling of what is going on around me and what are some of the thoughts and feelings that I am dealing with.

For me writing is something that I have enjoyed doing for years and years and I hope to be able to continue to get more writing achieved in the next while. I do have some goals that I would like to achieve with my writing so that is something that I am going to be working towards in the next little while. I am going to say what it is because I don’t want the pressure as I don’t know how long it is going to take me to get the goals achieved. 

My writing is a way to sometimes escape from the daily routine as I can sit and put my earplugs in and just write and let the rest of the world disappear. Of course, there are times when the rest of the world is part of what makes me write more because of what is happening around me at a given time. I am someone that normally has something to write on with me when we are out and about because I never know what a thought or idea will hit and I need to get it down.

I try and capture a thought when I get it and even if it isn’t a big idea when the thought initially hits it can sometimes grow into something a lot bigger so that is why I try and capture even the smallest of ideas. I do have a document with a bunch of blog ideas that I would like to write and if I could sit and write all those ideas, I would probably have blogs written for at least a year or more.

My writing in some ways is my escape and a way to relax, and I do enjoy it a lot. Knowing that I have been able to continue to write at least a little bit each day for almost 12 years makes me feel wonderful. Probably by the time this entry is posted I will have surpassed the 12 years of not missing a day of writing. The total might not be the greatest some days but at least finding that little bit of time to put some words down helps a lot. My writing is what brings me joy and just continuing to write the different blogs and such makes me happy and that is why I write.

How I start most days

People have asked me how I start my day and most of my days are very simple unless we are heading out to meet clients or go to a conference. I do like my morning routine, and it has been something that I have been doing for quite a few years now and it has helped me get things achieved most days.

Once I am up and ready to start the day, it’s important that I make my cup of tea which is normally English breakfast tea. I don’t have this everyday and, but we are going to be home, I am going to be starting my day with my 16-ounce cup of tea. Once the tea is made it is off to my desk where I will start the computer and open the documents that I normally use to start my day.

Here is what I will start with each morning when I start the computer:

• Writing outline – word document
• Word count – spreadsheet
• YouTube – Port of Miami Cruise Ship Terminals (BLC Streams)
• Email accounts

These are what I will have open before I start by day and yes having two monitors, but my laptop screen helps me be able to have all these things open and available for me to check things. Now a couple of these things that I open by sound a little different, but they help me with my focus.

• YouTube – Port of Miami Cruise Ship Terminals – this is a live stream of the cruise ships that sail out of Miami, so it is a nice to have a nice relaxing view for my day. This is normally open most of the time as I enjoy just having something to look at and I usually refer to this as my window. Also, the weather is a lot nicer to Miami than it is in Toronto in the middle of the winter.
• Word count – spreadsheet – this is a document where I document the number of words that I write each day and the total word count for each blog that I write. It is for me just a fun way of tracking how the writing is going each day.
• Writing outline – this is the document where I do my journaling and I say it daily so I can see what I was thinking and feeling that day. It is also where the raw blog posts are written so it is fun to see when specific blogs get written.

So, my morning routine is quite simple, with my cup of tea sitting in front of me I start to work on my daily journal and that normally lasts for about the first hour or hour and a half of my day and then after that is when everything else happens. I enjoy having this time to myself and I must admit there are days that most of the writing for the day is completed in this time.

My routine is quite simple, and I love it because it helps me get the focus for the day and then I can move other things forward. Of course, during this time I do quickly check email to see if there is anything that needs my immediate attention otherwise, the emails wait until after I have got my writing done completed. My daily planner is also checked but again it is just to make sure I know what the day ahead looks like.

I think most people have their daily routine and it how they start their day and for me I am happy with my routine and quite often this routine also happens on the weekends, so it is nice to have that consistency. If you have a similar routine, please let me know because it would be interesting to compare them.

Writing goals

I think the ones of us that do quite a bit of writing normally have some goals that they want to meet. It can be the number of words a day or the number of pages, it doesn’t matter but it can also become something that can affect how you write and what you write. Having writing goals can help you stay focused, but it can also impact you emotionally if you aren’t having a good writing day.

Recently I had been having some really good writing days and was seeing an average number of words that was making me extremely happy and then I had a day that just wasn’t quite as good as the previous days, and it started to bother me. Yes, I was still writing, and I should have been happy with the number of words that I achieved but it started to upset me. What I didn’t see was that the number of words that I had been writing was a lot higher than I have written most months since 2018. It did bother me when I looked at just the month of January and saw that the average was going to come down a little bit, but I forgot that just being able to spend the time what I did writing should be what makes me happy.

Setting writing goals sure can help you move things forward but when you have some exceptional writing days you have to remember to think about them as exceptional days and be happy about them. After doing some thinking after getting frustrated with what was still a good writing total, I started to look back at the number of words that I had averaged through all the months I have tracked my writing and how much I had been writing at the beginning of January was extremely high.

What I did end up doing was adjusting my writing goal a little bit and figured that I should be happy with an average that is a little lower because that is making sure that I can get the writing done that I want to do. Also, if I don’t reach this new average, I am also going to be ok with what I am able to accomplish because I am still writing each day and that is part of what is important to me. Sure, I would love to see an average like I was achieving in early 2018 and late 2017, but I also have to accept that times have changed and the how I write has also changed.  

Setting writing goals that are pushing you too hard can impact what you are writing and how you are writing, and you have to remember that. Maybe, seeing a high writing total would be nice but are you just putting word onto paper to see that total or are you writing with a focus and understanding that words are just what is important is how the thoughts and ideas are coming out.

Getting back to writing

This entry could have quite a few different titles because of course being someone that has been writing for years, what do I mean getting back to writing. Quite a few years ago (late 2013) I was challenged to see if I could write for 365 days without missing a day. I decided to give that a try because I was someone that did enjoy writing and journaling, so I didn’t think it would be too hard to do. Well, I must admit that the first year of trying to write every day even if I only wrote a few words was a bit of a challenge.

I did achieve that writing and wrote for 365 days and thought at the end of it that maybe I could try to do it for another year. What helped me to continue to do the writing was tracking how many words I wrote each day so that I had a means of being able to see that I did write each day, and slowly the number of words that I wrote each day started to improve a bit.

The actual writing seemed to get better the more I wrote, and then I decided to give myself a challenge, and it was to see how many blogs entries I could write for this blog in one year. In 2016, I was able to post 107 blogs, which made me happy and showed me that writing and showing others my writing made me happy. Then life decided that it was going to put some challenges in front of me, so I didn’t get as much writing done, at least for my blogs. I was still writing in my journal every day, but I wasn’t writing to show other people what “Life how I see it” was doing. Writing for someone else wasn’t something that I could focus on, so I took until 2022 before I could start to write more blogs. Yes, between 2018 and 2021 I did write a few, but nothing like I did before then.

The good news, through all of this, was I was able to continue to write every day in my journal, which helped so much. Now, here we are in 2024, and I hope that I get back to getting more blog entries written because that is what makes me happy. The writing every day has continued, and I have now been able to write at least in my journal for over 10 years without missing a day.

So, this year, I hope that I can continue to write in my journal every day and write more blogs because that is something that makes me happy. I am finally seeing that being able to write the various blogs that I do is what makes me smile because I have someone that enjoys writing, and I am not going to let what anyone says stop me from writing. Being able to write and show my writing to others makes me happy, and hopefully before long I will be able to write for others as well. Until then, I will continue to write my blogs and, in my journal, and know that I am finally getting back to writing.

Getting my writing back

 

For a lot of people, being able to sit and write most days is something that they can’t do. Yes, they can write emails and things like that, but not just write or journal every day. As of when I am writing this, I have been writing or journaling for 3,566 days without missing a day (that is almost 10 years). Of course, there are days when there isn’t a lot of writing achieved, but then there are days when I can sit and lose myself for quite a while.

I do track how many words I write each day, and it has been interesting to see how over the last few years that number has changed. You would have thought that during the Pandemic when everyone was home and unable to do things, I would have had a wonderful writing total. Honestly, it was during the Pandemic that my writing totals went down to some of the lowest totals that I have seen since I started tracking my writing totals. The Pandemic is only part of what impacted my writing, as we have been dealing with family health issues as well. The family health issues are still ongoing, but life is starting to get back to a more normal routine.

Here it is the end of September 2023, and I can finally say that I am starting to write like I did prior to the Pandemic. The writing totals are looking a lot better, and I am starting to get back to being able to lose myself in my writing, which I haven’t done for quite a while. Being able to see that I can lose myself makes me happy, and it also tells me that maybe now I can put my writing back to being important.

Getting my writing bug back and being able to sit and write and enjoy the overall writing is very important to me. I write for work as well as personal, so that means I should be able to sit and write easily. Now that I am seeing the enjoyment in my writing again, I am looking forward to seeing what I can get accomplished in the next little while and maybe get back to seeing more blogs and articles written.

 

Writing for fun versus writing for work

There are quite a few people; me included, that write for both fun and work.  The writing styles that we use are different for each of the various pieces of writing we are working on. 

Writing for fun, this is something that I do when I am writing my craft blog because my crafting is what I do to relax, and it is fun, so I want to ensure that when I write the blog, I am showing some fun in my writing style.  I understand that not everyone understands that you can have a different writing style for the different parts of your life, but it is common.

Writing for work, now this is what I do for clients and when I write my other blog.  The writing style that I use then is a lot different from when I am writing my craft blog, and it should be.  The work writing is a lot clearer and to the point where I need to get the details out, and that is it. 

I have the experience of someone reading my two different blogs and not realizing they were both written by me.  Yes, this shows that there can be two different writing styles used by one person and that you can achieve a different imagine just by how you write.  There are days when writing for fun isn’t something that comes too easily, but I can write the work items with no problem and vice versa.  Yes, writing is a challenge, and it is something that we need to work on and get everything done that needs to get done.  One of my tricks is that I normally have both work and fun writing that I need to do and when one isn’t working, I will quickly flip to working on the other and get that one done.  I have found that once I have been able to work on one style of writing for a while, the other method is a lot easier to do because it is a change.

I have heard authors say that they can write a lot of short stories easily, but the novel is a challenge and then other authors can write the 100,000-word novel, but a short story isn’t something they can manage to do.  These are the challenges that they face, and they understand how to handle them, like I know how to manage the problems that I manage.

Writing for work and writing for fun are both things that I enjoy doing.  Sure, people that understand that I write for work may not know that I can have two different styles, but I can.  I have also been able to say to some people that if they don’t like my fun writing, they don’t have to read it because I am not going to change that writing style as that is how I want to write those blogs.  Writing for me is something that I do most of the day every day, so I need to ensure that I am enjoying the writing that I am doing.  My goals with my writing are to ensure that I can keep the clients happy with what I write for work, and that I can keep myself happy with the writing that I do for me.

Daily writing

There are so many blogs, websites, etc about learning to write on a daily basis. Maybe some of them have good advice on them and others are just going to repeat the standard message. To write every day you just need to sit down and write. One really good reason to write every day is because a better writer you just need to practice the skill.

One thing that I learned while trying to write on a daily basis was not to get upset with myself when I missed a day at first. Writing every day has to become a habit and yes it does take some time to get into that habit of sitting down and writing.

So many people say that they are writer but there is one thing missing if what they really say. Being a writer means that you need to write and not just talk about writing. Real writers are those people that simply write every single day. Of course, some writers are lucky and are able to just sit down and the words just flow but others have had to practice their skills and get into the habit of writing every day.

For me to get into the habit of writing I needed to have a few steps to assist me in achieving the daily writing and these were:

• Pick a spot where I was going to try and write every day. I found that sitting at my desk in front of my computer was a good spot for me to start my writing.

• Set a time of the day when I would try and write. I found that being able to write first thing in the morning was when I could just sit and write. It was also the time of day when emails and phone calls were less likely to interrupt my writing.

• Set myself a writing goal. This was originally how many words a day that I was going to try and achieve.

When I couldn’t get the words to start to flow in the morning where are some things that I would write about:

• What was the weather like when I sat down to write.

• What was on the schedule for the day, working at home, at our office, going to a conference or any of those things.

• What did I do after I finished writing the day before.

• What was I feeling as I sat down to write.

• Use a writing prompt as there are a lot of websites that will email you one each day.

Of course these are just some of the ideas that I had when I started to write. I got into the habit of trying to write each day and it has got a little bit easier. There are days when I don’t seem to be able to find the words but I still sit down at the computer and try each morning. I may only have a few minutes at the beginning of my day to get something down but normally I will find time at some point during the day to add to the writing that I started.

Daily writing is just what it is. It is sitting down somewhere every day and writing even a little bit. Being afraid of what your writing looks like is something else that you need to overcome. Your daily writing is just that it is a draft and no one else is going to need to see it. If you are writing a story then yes you will edit it later to make it look professional. Your general daily writing is just for you and you have to remember that when you sit down to write. It doesn’t have to be formatted perfectly and you don’t need to ensure that every word is the exact word that you should have in that sentence.

To get into the habit of writing you just need to give yourself permission to write and let it happen. You may not achieve your writing goal every day and something your writing may not make a lot of sense when you read it over but at least you are writing. To become a writer and actually say that you write means one thing and that is you do write.

It’s one thing to call yourself a writer but it’s quite another to actually write.