Week 1 of National Just Write Month. How’s It Going?

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Week 1 of National Just Write Month. How’s It Going?

By Tac Anderson ⋅ November 6, 2011 ⋅ Post a comment

Filed Under Blogging, Writing

November is a big month for social media, group activities. Movember is in full swing and countless men around the World are growing hideous looking mustaches to raise money to help stop prostate and testicular cancer. Myself included.

November is NaNoWriMo, (National Novel Writing Month) and BlogHer has turned it into NaBloPoMo (National Blog Post Month). This prompted me to lower the ball for all of my goal setting writer wannabe friends like myself and declare that it’s National Just Write Month. Based on the comments I received on that post, a few tweets, links and emails there are about a dozen or so of you on board.

So how’s it going? Are you still writing everyday? Remember this is just to write something, anything everyday. Could be handwritten. Might be something you publish as a blog post or not. Doesn’t matter.

I ask, because if you haven’t already, you’re going to hit a wall. It’s really hard to create new habits. Especially positive ones. Inertia is a powerful force. Stick with it. Keep pushing. It get’s easier, but week two will be the hardest week for most of you.

Did you already slip? That’s okay, start now. Besides, I’m sure you’ve written *something*, right? An email, a sticky note, something. Let’s just step it up a little for the rest of the month.

I’ve stuck with it so far and have been joined by Katlen Tillman, who’s been an occasional contributor on the blog but has been on a tear lately, despite her travels all across the States.

But I’d love to hear from you guys. What have you learned? What’s been the hardest part? What’s been the most rewarding? Have any tips for the rest of us?

About Tac

Social media anthropologist. Communications strategist. Business model junkie. Chief blogger here at New Comm Biz.

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Dan J Mckee

I find that writing every day is easy. What’s hard is trying to write and publish quality material on a consistent basis. I can write and publish 7 days a week with ease, but keeping the quality up is difficult
http://www.newcommbiz.com/ tacanderson

I know people use the analogy of building muscle or training for athletics when talking about building our brain and while it’s an over simplification, I do think it’s appropriate. For me the first step was writing everyday, then publishing mostly everyday and with that, working on the quality. It’s a constant cycle and I’ve found that backing off on the publishing frequency does help with the quality, but if I don’t push myself, from time to time, like this month where I’m publishing something everyday, then I start to plateau and eventually loose ground.

But yes, it’s hard, it’s work and I have a long way to go. If it were simple, everyone would do it.
http://timbursch.com timbursch

So far it has been going well. I’ve been working on writing before anything else in the morning. But you know how life is: sick kids, early meeting, etc. Life throws curves and the challenge is flexing and staying committed to the daily action. So, that mean squeezing and adapting when the morning goes awry.

I like the conversation about writing vs publishing and getting that muscle in shape. Working on that!
http://www.newcommbiz.com/ tacanderson

Life will always get in the way, but isn’t that the point of the book you recommended, The War of Art?
http://timbursch.com timbursch

Right, just do the work.
http://twitter.com/ClaireBoyles Claire Boyles

OOOO Excellent, this is much more manageable than writing a novel in a month!!

I’m on board late, but I’ve been focusing on writing more and I think I have written pretty much every day this last week, so I’m joining in!!

On Saturday I went to a Literary Cafe with my laptop, met a friend there so we could both write, once she joined we did have a bit of chatting, but did get some writing done, and organisation of my writing, so Yay me!

I’m making a commitment to write every day from now until the end of November, and I’m looking forward to reading how others are doing on this too
How have you found it Tac? Managed to write every day so far?
http://www.newcommbiz.com/ tacanderson

Glad to have you on board Claire. I’ve had a pretty good habit of writing everyday for a while now, even if I don’t publish. I find it best if I stick to the same time (first thing in the morning) but as @timbursch:disqus and I were discussing if I can’t do that, it’s important to find time anyway. And as @DanJMckee:disqus pointed out, the hard part isn’t writing everyday, once you get in the habit, it’s writing good enough stuff to publish everyday. Now claiming I’m there yet, but pushing myself with challenges like this help.
http://twitter.com/ClaireBoyles Claire Boyles

yes, I, with a few others started a writing circle a couple of months ago, we set our writing goals together for the month, share our successes and give each other tips/feedback/general support with our writing. It’s really significantly improved the amount I’m writing, which is wonderful.

I have a goal of writing 2 blog posts/articles per week but I’m also writing a book, cunningly though the articles/blog posts can be adapted for the book too, as it’s a daily reader style book that has short topics each day
http://twitter.com/ClaireBoyles Claire Boyles

just read your post on friendship (I’ll leave a comment there about that one)

But was reminded, you’re now in London, if you’d like to join us on our next writers circle, you would be most welcome- it’s on Thurs 1st Dec and we meet in the evenings on Southbank (The Royal Festival Hall)