At the end of each month, I’ve been reading over my journal entries with a highlighter in my hand. I spend most mornings writing a couple of pages, working my thoughts out or trying to capture what I’m feeling that day. Usually, day after day of writing, a theme starts to emerge. I say the same things over and over, and as I reread what I’ve written, those are the things to pay attention to (and highlight).
What I wrote about most in March is depth—how hungry my soul is for deeper things, how parched I feel.
I also wrote this over and over: Things take time.
It takes time to create new habits and routines.
It takes time to find your voice.
It takes time to feel something out and see if it works.
Things take time. Important things, anyway. Things that are worth something. I think about nature, about how it doesn’t rush. Everything happens in its own time. Every season serves a purpose, and all of nature follows an instinctive rhythm.
Why would our lives be any different?
I think it’s easy here to blame the internet and the abundance of information at our fingertips. Social media gives us a glimpse into what everyone else is doing all day, and it can feel like they’ve got it all figured out and we don’t. Add in a few writers cranking out 60,000-word books in two months and a slew of small business owners launching one thing after another, and it’s easy to feel behind.
But we’re not behind. We’re right where we’re supposed to be.
Things take time.
We can’t compare where we are to where someone else is. We can’t see ourselves standing at the starting line and race the person a hundred yards ahead. We have to run our own race. We have to keep our own pace.
I’m saying this to myself as much as anyone else. I’ve believed that I have to keep up with everyone else and be constantly (and consistently) productive. Like being productive is a badge of honor. Like I can’t slow down for a minute and just be. I’ve bought the full bill of goods, time and again.
In March, I realized I was right back in the thick of it, and reading through my journals confirmed it.
But guess what. Things take time. I’m running my own race. There’s no rush.
I know this, and yet I struggle with it. I want to be right in the middle of the pack, holding my own. I want to feel strong and capable. Most of all, I want to find my place.
At the beginning of the year, I decided this year was the year I’d try. I’d experiment and see how things went. The thing is, it’s totally counter to my nature to be so casual about it. I’m a planner. I like to sketch out exactly how I’m going to do things and research the best way to accomplish it. It’s not in my nature to say, “I’ll give that a try and see how it goes.”
So, this year has been a little uncomfortable:
- I quit drinking for a month because of my drinking habit and found myself sleeping better than I had in years.
- I started intermittent fasting to become healthier and spent weeks preoccupied with what I was eating.
- I joined a co-working space to see if I could get more work done and learned plenty about my working habits but ended up quitting after two months.
- I started writing about a story I’m not sure I want to write, and I don’t know if it’ll ever become a book.
- I’ve made schedule after schedule for myself to get my writing done, then realized the schedules don’t work.
But things take time. As much as we want to figure it all out now, sometimes we have to fumble around and learn as we go.
The most important thing is to keep pressing on. To persevere. To never lose heart. To remember that this is a process, all of it, and it’s okay to slow down and take our time. We’ll get there eventually.
Working Toward a Writing Routine
At the beginning of the year, I firmly believed I was going to get myself on a writing schedule. This was my number one goal for the year, not just the month. I knew I wanted to write a book, and I thought the way to do that was to create calendars and schedules that I’d inevitably abide by in the delusion that my future self would be happy being so scheduled.
The truth is, I don’t like having a set schedule. It’s not my thing. And that’s not going to change, no matter how hard I try.
The advice out there about writing has more to do with habit than with craft. When I was in graduate school, all we talked about was craft. We read in earnest, analyzing how writers did what they did on the page. We critiqued each other’s writing, giving thoughtful feedback that ultimately strengthened our work.
We did not talk about writing habits.
The assumption was that if you were a writer, you’d get your butt in the chair. That’s what we were there for, after all. The time I spent in those classes, thinking about craft and practicing it, was so valuable to me, much more so than habit development.
It’s important to have good habits and to set yourself up for success. But writing advice is cheap. All the talk about how to do this thing is just that: talk. Ultimately, we each have to find our own way. We can take whatever advice works for us and toss the rest.
If having a schedule works, great. If writing first thing in the morning works, do it. If you have two hours a day to dedicate to writing time, go for it. But if these things don’t work for you, if you’ve tried them and they don’t fit, let it go.
That’s the biggest thing I’m learning.
Last month, I was setting a timer and writing in a notebook almost every day. This month, I wrote on my computer in one-hour chunks, and only wrote a dozen times. The writing is getting done, and that’s all that matters.
There’s no one way to do it; there’s only whatever works today. I’m resting in that now and taking the pressure off myself.
As far as what I got accomplished, I wrote about 14,500 words in twelve hours, but I only had eleven writing sessions. I wrote a similar amount in February, though the day-to-day writing looked totally different.
I also have about 35,000 words written as part of the memoir I’m working on, but I’m still writing my way into the book. I’m calling it a ‘down draft,’ meaning I’m getting everything down, writing whatever I remember however it comes out, and not trying to craft it into a story yet.
When I say things take time, I certainly mean it regarding this book. It’s going to be a long process.
What I read in March
I read six books this month, including three memoirs:
- Atomic Habits: An Easy & Proven Way to Build Good Habits & Break Bad Ones by James Clear: This book breaks down our habits, how they are affected by our sense of identity, and how we can take small steps that can make a big impact in the long run. Not much of it was new to me, but it’s worth a read if you’re new to habit formation (or even if you’re not).
- Twirl: My Life with Stories, Writing & Clothes by Callie Feyen: Callie is one of my writing buddies and it was a joy to read her latest book.
- The Coaching Habit by Michael Bungay Stanier: I read this wanting to understand how to ask better questions when talking to people about their writing. It’s well worth the read and a quick one too.
- Tell Me More: Stories about the 12 Hardest Things I’m Learning to Say by Kelly Corrigan: I like the premise of this book more than I enjoyed reading it. Each essay is based on phrases from Corrigan’s life.
- Dragonfly Notes: On Distance and Loss by Anne Panning: Anne was one of my teachers in graduate school, so it was interesting not only to read about someone I know, but to learn about things that have happened since I was her student. This memoir chronicles her mother’s unexpected death and how Anne reconciled her relationship with her mother and subsequent loss.
- The Giver by Lois Lowry: Read this with my daughter. It wasn’t an easy read, but it gave us a lot to talk about.
—
March wraps up the first quarter of the year, and I still wonder how much happier I feel. Is all this effort worth it? My answer would probably be different from day to day, but overall the answer is yes. Yes, it’s worth it. It’s worth the struggle to figure things out. It’s worth trying, even if all you end up with is something that doesn’t work. Cross it off the list, let it go, and move on to the next thing.
The most important thing is this: Keep fighting the good fight. Keep going, keep going…
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