Photo by Ricky Shirke on Unsplash, meme words added by Erin Penn
The admonition of the meme is harsher than my normal, but I think the picture captures the base of it well. The dancer works every.single.day to have her body respond elegantly and swiftly to the dance requirements. Her workouts don’t only include the present dance, but other muscle memory building techniques, stretches, balance, movement, and freezes.
Writing is the same. It can’t be a sometime thing. It can’t be put off until tomorrow, and then tomorrow again and then tomorrow again. A to Z blog tour can help break the cycle of “I’ll find time to write tomorrow.” Writing muscles – from speed of typing, creative flow, self-editing as you go, having the characters actually talk to you, grammar and paragraph flow, and dozen of other techniques and skills, need constant work. Of course sometime life interferes, just like sometime a dancer can’t dance.
I’ve been a better writer. I write faster and more, when I write daily. It’s what works for me. A doctor-author-friend can only write on weekends; this method works for him. What writing exercise builds your muscles and gets you to your goals, that is the path you need to dance on.
I got the meme words from Lucienne Diver in her Magical Words post from October 3rd, 2012, “Motivation”. The URL is:
Good post. I agree about writing every day. I also love to paint, and it is hard to do both Every. Single. Day. That’s why I start my days at 5 AM. I get up at 4:45 AM. Then I try to get a good 4-5 hours (not enough) on the writing front done before I switch to painting. Generally, I don’t work weekends because I devote that time to my family.
But there are days where things come up and I fall short of any goals I’ve set. But that’s life. 🙂
“…that is the path you need to dance on.” I love that. We all have different paths, and we all dance differently. 🙂