NaWriMo or Write for a Month

I’m going be writing for the month of November.

Writing has been on my To Do List for … a while now. There have been different things I would have written about, different reasons why I would have written. There have been different Projects why I would have (occasionally have) written. But the Task of writing has remained a constant on the To Do List.

Sure, as mentioned, there are different projects or lists where the more specific writing Tasks would have been captured and sorted, different specifics or intents or purposes. But it isn’t writing for the Task or Project’s sake.

Writing has been on my To Do List for a while.

There have been a lot of reasons I wanted to write. And there have been a lot of reasons why I haven’t. But if you’re ever going to do something, at some point you just have to start. So while I won’t be writing a Novel, I am using the inspiration of NaNoWriMo and the calendar rolling over to a new month as a good a time as any to start.

This will be an exercise in commitment and discipline more than anything else. I have a stack of what can best be described as ideas across various apps. Some have the courtesy of having been labeled “drafts” while others are nothing more than a half-formed thought captured haphazardly in OmniFocus and shelved away on a Someday Maybe list. But there’s no guarantee any of those see the light of day. The point of this exercise is to build a writing routine, to endeavor to create a habit.

One of the things I struggle with most across any area of responsibility or interest in my life is stress paralysis. If I’m not sure I’ll do a thing right, I struggle with where to start.

The irony of this is the job for which I am employed is based in a system that gives you permission to fail and fail fast, learn, iterate, and keep moving.

But a big part of the stress paralysis that has kept me from some of the writing has been “the What” of this site. I have had some form of blog or personal site online for a long time. Sometimes the pieces have been spread out, sometimes things have been combined in various forms. But if I wanted to commit to any of them, there are probably 4-5 distinct purposes to which I could steer this site. Not being sure exactly which one, not being sure if it is “okay” to combine more than one (or even, possibly, all), and so on have kept me in that frustrating state of paralysis.

So. Here we go. We will commit to write and we will see what comes. In the end maybe some old posts end up hidden. Maybe some hidden posts end up published again.

The intent, at it’s base, behind this month is that exercise of commitment and discipline. But if I could hope for a goal coming out of it, I would look for a more clear identity for this site in the season(s) to come.

Task: Write on November 1st – Complete