Just a little wrap-up after my daily blogging with Effy Wild during April.
- I love doing blog challenges! I had forgotten how much fun they are, and I'm so glad I did this and connected with a bunch of other creatives and stretched my blogging muscles.
- Daily blogging is way too much for me, at least long term. But I like the push of "blogging must happen today," so I'm trying out a set schedule of blogging on Wednesdays and Sundays. We'll see how that goes.
- Back on April 1 at the start of the blog-along I wrote about these cute habit trackers I found. I loved them! They were adorable! I completely forgot to use them after two days. It turns out having them glued into my planner does not remind me to fill them in. I did do some of the things on that list (blogging for the challenge which I did each day in April, story writing which I did very little of, and cleaning something which I also did very little of). I do great with my monthly exercise calendar which has my goals for the month and squares to put cute stickers in every time I exercise. And it also hangs on a board in my bedroom where I see it several times a day, and I'm wondering if that visibility is a much more crucial element than I realized. I'm going to rearrange a few things and make space for hanging up more trackers, and I will try again in June (or maybe a half-month thing starting mid-May).
- I'm working through a 90-day novel writing book with a couple of writer friends. We started May 1, and so far it's different from what I imagined and seems pretty useful. More about that in another post, maybe on Sunday.
That's about it in my corner of the world. Looking at what's been working. Making plans for how to use that going forward. How are things in your corner?
Ohhhhh I'm super interested in the 90-day novel writing book! Maybe you could do a book review on it in some blog posts as you go? I'd love to know the name of the book.
I loved the blog-along too. I'm too scared to stop though, cause I know I'm an all-or-nothing kind of person and I worry that if I schedule down to only 2-3 blog posts a week I will slowly do less and less blog posts. So for now, I'm still blogging daily. We'll see how long it lasts.
The book is The 90-Day Novel by Alan Watt. I have an older edition, but my friend said the new one has prompts for memoir, too.
I am a little worried about falling away from blogging, but I know I won't be able to sustain the daily thing, so I'm trying to find something that will work for me. Hoping that making the expectation that I write on certain days of the week will be motivating.
I think you’re right about the visibility of trackers as the same thing has happened to me - I put them in a book and promptly forgot them. I should schedule a day for posts too, good idea!
It's funny--I know this about myself, and yet every once in a while I try something that completely goes against my need for things to be visible. But I know that I get to my creative work when my space is set up with at least some of my supplies out and ready. I get things done by putting sticky notes where I will see them, including on the front door. I need to see things. And yet I also love the idea of using a planner, so I wanted to put the trackers in there. But I don't look at my planner every day, so I forget about the trackers being in there. Because I need them to be right in front of me.
What a great idea to plan two days for blogging! I think mine is going to be just whenever - plus the posts for DTs etc...
I think if I had something like your DT posts that kept me coming back regularly I'd be better at remembering to do it at other times, but I don't seem to be so good at that,so hopefully an actual schedule will work and not feel too restricting.
I'm going to schedule my blogging too. My fingers are twitchy when I wake up now!
Oh, I'm glad you'll be keeping on with the blogging. Twitchy fingers--lol! It became a nice bright spot, the writing and the checking in with others. I'm so glad a lot of us are finding ways to keep with it.
I'm no good with trackers either. I thought I had found a sure thing late last year, but lo and behold, I haven't used it for the last two months. I am still getting stuff done though, so it's all good.
If you're getting stuff done, that's the thing that matters! I'm just really great at forgetting to do things even when they're things I really want to do. Hence my continuing experiments with trackers and lists and such. Okay, and because for whatever reason I just love that kind of stuff.
Scheduling is such a good idea. I do this with my creative practice, but not so much with the blogging. I just open and type whenever I feel like it. Heh. 🙂
Love that you're writing a novel! I'm going to go look up that book!
It took me a long time to admit this to myself, but I tend to let myself forget to do things I want to do. And I seem especially prone to doing this when it's something important to me or something (like blogging, which is also important to me) that I feel is particularly critique-able. Scheduling helps me push myself to do it anyway.
I'd love to hear more about your 90 day novel project. I know there are a few books out there on the subject. Seems the one book everyone is raving about now is "Save the cat! Write a Novel". It seems to crop up all over my Instagram feed.
I'm terrible at tracking things. Except during NaNo lol.
The book is The 90-Day Novel by Alan Watt, and it's an interesting way to plan a book. We're supposed to start the actual writing on Day 29. There's a short reading for each day, then prompts to write from, and also the task to write for two hours a day which I don't do because I truly don't have two hours every single day. But I still feel like I'm getting a lot out of it.
I think the reason it might be easier for people like us to track things like NaNo, etc. is the group aspect and public accountability. I'm pretty sure that is what makes the difference on this stuff for me--our 30-day blogging challenge kind of proved my point to me. I'm sure I'll have more to say about this soon! 😀