Weekly Update and Making Writing a Habit

It's Tuesday again.  Another week gone by and time for another blog post.  I'm doing my best to post every Tuesday.  Considering that I missed last week, well let's just say that there's some issues for me to work through.

Random Final Fantasy guy!

So I'm deep into "The Martian" now.  At least halfway, and it is really good.  The chapters are a convenient length, allowing me to get through one or a little better everyday on my lunch break.  I try not to read it too much at home, but it's hard to resist at times.  While at home, I'm reading "Words of Radiance" whenever I get the chance.  I wish I had it in e-book.  If it was, it would be finished by now.  As it stands, I'm about halfway through it as well.  "The Martian" will get finished first as it is a much smaller book, and it's easier to carry around.

Besides reading, I've managed to write everyday.  No real shock there though.  Writing is a compulsion now, guilt falls over me whenever the thought of skipping a day crosses my mind.  Yesterday, the writing got finished a little early, and there was time to draw a little something.  That's it right there!  He's a character from a Final Fantasy manga that's laying on my desk.  I don't know who, but I hope I did him justice.

I wanted to talk a little about making a habit today.  They say it takes 21 days to form a habit.  That may be true, but you can't let your guard down after that if it's a habit you want to keep.  You have to fight to keep your new habit lest you slip back to the old ways.

I've managed to do it with writing, but let me tell you, it's not easy.  Even now, approaching 900 days, I have some really bad days.  Just today as a matter of fact, there was some stuff going on that made me want to not put anything down.  Just forget writing and everything else, but remember that compulsion that we talked about above?  That guilt?  That's what keeps me going.  That may not be healthy, but anyway.

What you have to figure out for you is what keeps you going.  There are some things out there that can help you out too.  The first is The Magic Spreadsheet.  With it, you have a minimum 250 words to write a day.  Every consecutive day adds to your chain and you receive points.  You eventually level up, write more words, get more points, so on and so forth.  It's a great tool.  I use it myself and have for almost 900 days now.  It's part of the compulsion.  I need my points!

The second is the Writing Challenge group.  They started on Twitter, and your challenge is to write 500 words a day.  They have a great group of writers over there and though I haven't been around much lately, September may be my month to get back in it.

Check both of these tools out.  They may be just what you need to get and stay motivated and form that habit that you've been wanting.  There's nothing to it but to do it.  So why wait?  Go ahead and get started now, and be sure to let me know how it goes.