Truth #8: Something happened to me today…

Today, for the first time in a really long time I have had a proper productive writing day. I don’t know what has come over me but finally, after a long wait the words just kinda eased off my fingers onto the screen and the ideas were just pouring out.

In the last week or so I have been trying to decide what to give up for lent. I was considering smoking but the thought was just too scary for me. Though I have to admit that the last few nights I have been waking up with the feeling that I had an ashtray lodged in my throat. It’s a terrible feeling and I am hoping that soon enough it will force me to quit this nasty habit (but, those smokes are so good, they calm me down, and they give me a reason to step out for some fresh air once in a while.) I considered giving up carbs as well (like I did last year which did wonders for my weight) but as I am now an habitual runner I am dependant on those carbs and I just can’t let them go. Then I thought that maybe I should give up meat. But no, just can’t do that.

I spoke to a friend of mine a few days ago and asked her what she was planning on giving up. I must note, that I am not a religious person, and though I was raised as a Catholic I have pretty much severed all ties with the religion. But living in Croatia, in a predominantly Catholic society, their rituals and beliefs are all around and very prevalent in both the media and in every day life. You just can’t avoid it. What point here now is that though I don’t consider myself Catholic, I do like the idea forty days of fasting (normally associated with food, but we live in a modern world where these types of activities can be expanded to other forms of abstention), it’s a good method of self-discipline. So as I was saying, I was asking my friend what she was planning on abstaining from and she said that this year she was planning on giving up anything but instead decided to use these forty days to do something good for herself, such as preparing her lunches at home and taking them to work everyday so that she wouldn’t be left to snacking on junk throughout the day. And I thought, that’s a good idea. And then I wondered what it is that I can force myself to continuously do for forty days straight and hopefully make into a GOOD habit. But I hadn’t come up with anything.

Until yesterday, or the day before, I am not sure, when I went onto Allan Woodrow’s blog 
The Shelf Life
 and read his advice for successful writing http://notesfromasuburbandad.wordpress.com/2010/02/09/how-to-be-a-better-writer/and his blog http://notesfromasuburbandad.wordpress.com/2010/02/07/when-life-gets-in-the-way/ about how three days had passed and how he was ripping his hair out not having been able to write. And then there was Twentington 100’s blog http://twentington100.wordpress.com/ 100 poems in 100 days. Yes, there is another person who is working every single day on his writing. This is what I need to do too.

So thanks to Allan and Twentington and thanks to Lent I have committed myself to write every single day. I’m hoping to average at least a thousand words a day and if I knew how, I would set up a tracker on this blog to record how many words I had written every day. By the time Easter rolls around I should have approximately 40,000 words which is almost half a book!!! Which is AWESOME!!!