Writing Every Day

If you want to become proficient at something, it is best to practice, regularly, every day. I write nearly every day and have been doing so for years. At this point, not writing would be like skipping lunch or missing my favorite TV show. And, on any given day, not writing would be more difficult than writing something. Nonetheless, I can see where people might ask - what in the world do you write about everyday? So, I thought I would provide some answers. I will sketch out a few ideas here and elaborate on some in future posts.

The easiest and most common way to start writing everyday would be to keep a daily diary.  At the end of the day, jot down what occurred during the course of that day. If you want to get fancy, you can comment on the events, and if you want to get even fancier, you can try to organize your reactions to the day's events into some sort of pattern. Or, better yet, a recurring pattern. There are many variations on this theme and finding variations is a good way to keep the words flowing. For example, you may decide to write in the morning and explore what you intend to do for the day. Later, that evening, you can look over your plans and make a few remarks about how it all turned out. If you are not comfortable with the idea of a diary, call it a journal. And if you are not comfortable pouring your inner thoughts into it, you can step back and be more dispassionate. Write as though you are someone observing your life rather than the one experiencing it.

If writing your inner thoughts makes you feel vulnerable you can write on loose leaf paper, keep the papers in a three ring binder, and go through periodically and shred any that you never want anyone to see. Marcus Aurelius, the Stoic Emperor of Rome, (played by Richard Harris in Gladiator) kept a journal of his inner thoughts. On his deathbed, he asked his friends to burn it. They did not, and The Meditations of Marcus Aurelius is available on Amazon. So, if you are really bothered by people reading your inner thoughts, the shredding will give you a little peace.

A variation on the daily diary is the journal as therapy. Here you try to sort out all those thoughts in your head that plague you from time to time or even daily. What is it that bothers you? Why does it bother you? Does it bother other people? What would other people think if they knew that this bothered you? Is this something you should get over or just live with? Would others agree with your assessment? Perhaps you are afraid of dogs or want to travel but keep putting it off. Perhaps you are uncomfortable around people that you do not know well or you don't like change. Writing about these things helps you explore them and, in the process, you might learn something important about yourself. As with the diary, you can be as personal or dispassionate as you choose.  You can ever get creative. Write a paragraph or two as your inner self, then step back and be your own mentor - commenting on what you just wrote. If you want to be a little weird about it, you can get a self hat and a mentor hat. Then switch hats depending on which perspective you are writing from.

Another variation on this theme would be the journal to organize your thoughts. We all have way too much noise in our heads which people deal with in a wide variety of ways from meditation, to drinking, to sublimating it in other activities. But, this is like dealing with a messy closet by putting a lock on it rather than going in and cleaning up the mess.

Once you get comfortable with daily journal entries, there are endless ways to carry the practice into other areas. For example, if you take a trip somewhere, you can keep a travel log. If you are embarking on a big change of some kind, you can record your experiences so that you can make sense out of them later.

It takes a lot of practice to learn how to write well. And these daily efforts are practice, not the end product. They are ways to keep you writing as you learn how to write. If you have no idea how to sing and you go to a Karaoke bar, you will certainly make a fool out of yourself. And if you sit down to write the Great American Novel without having put in the writing practice, the outcome will be the same.

Daily journal entries can get you started with the practice of daily writing. As you advance, you can start writing essays and then short stories. But, we will pick that up in future posts.