Friday, July 6, 2012

Habit



I've come to the conclusion-- perhaps a bit late-- that the only way I stick to posting on blogs regularly is by setting a small goal every single day on a very very wide topic, like "my life."

Which means that this blog and the travel blog, http://noi6.blogspot.com , fall by the wayside.

It's bad. But there's got to be something better.

The trouble is, habit can only go so far with unpredictable schedules. Today we stayed in till 11am and then rushed off to the airport and got onto an airplane to get to Antananarivo, the Malagasy capital. (that's Madagascar).

Tomorrow we'll be up at who knows what hour to do who knows what-- i'm really hoping for autonomy, but that's not likely to happen. Oh, well. I'll have autonomy for almost the rest of my natural life, which is saying something.

But let me get back on track. While the content on Write Your World is slightly astounding… most of it is, shall we put it nicely, crap. The first few posts were good, and that was it. It doesn't bother me. It's more a writing exercise at the moment than anything else, and to be perfectly honest I'm a lazy person. If it got any harder I wouldn't be updating as often— of course, if it were 'a day in the life of Character X,' we might start talking. I'd be happy to write 500 word snippets of story every day.

… I am going to do that in 2013. It will be wonderful practice. A scene a day, or something. *Shrug*

As to goals. I made quite a few last December— 101 for the time period of 2012-mid 2014— but I haven't done any of them, and frankly I'm not too interesting in doing them. I tend to get slightly obsessive when confronted with challenges, though. I mellow out about a month into the year, and start setting slightly less crazy goals.

But now I'm starting to think. Why not stop setting goals and start creating habits? It's habits that are most important, right?

So, the habits, in order, to be performed daily:
- Write a 500-word world.
- Write at least 500 words of fiction.
- Edit fiction for 15 minutes.
- Write 100 words for a blog post, either outline or actual blog-post words.

Total time shouldn't be more than an hour, but will be more like 45, 50 minutes a day. And it shouldn't be too complicated to devote 45 minutes of my day to something. I tend to have a bit more time as it is.

It's going into place today, and it's going to stay in place until next January. You eat an elephant one bite at a time, and that's exactly how I'm going to catch up with all these blog posts. I'm still writing about Alice Springs, Australia— that was in early April, if I remember correctly.

So, onward! 

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