I stopped blogging towards the end of the year when I had COVID and a final to do. I didn’t get back on the horse. I wrote an about page for this blog, but that’s about it. I’ve been thinking like a classic perfectionist. I’ve been thinking, “I can’t write or post this yet because it has to be as good as my best post” and other similar thoughts. None of that is true.

Part of that thinking came from the overwhelming response I got from my post on thanksgiving in suffering. It got me wondering, “Can I write something that good again? If I continue writing about whatever comes to mind, will they keep reading? Should I choose a single topic this blog should be about?”

None of that matters. Helping people and glorifying God is all that matters. I’m not ready to pigeonhole myself into a particular topic. I would like to choose a main topic for this blog eventually, but I’m not ready to do that yet. I will create a “Start Here” post that will direct readers to different categories so they can read what most interests them. I saw that on a friend’s blog and I like it.

Right now, I’m in the discovery stage. I’m trying things out. I don’t have to have it all figured out. My objective is to write about many different topics and see what excites me. Some of these realizations have come slowly over time, others have come this week. I’ve been participating in an online event called Crazy Writing Week. It’s where a group of (predominately young) writers get together and do a bunch of writing sprints. The goal is to write as much as possible in one week. There are prizes if we collectively get to certain word count goals, we won all of them. 1069 of us collectively wrote 4.2 million words.

They also have instructors and a daily lesson you can watch. These instructors and lessons are from their paid program, the Young Writer’s Workshop, which I’ll be joining soon. I made internet friends of one of the instructors when I asked a question and got into a conversation with them. Part of what she did in that conversation was help me solidify my goals and what I want to do with writing. That conversation helped me focus on what I want to do with writing. That week of writing was a great experience for me. I worked on 5 small writing projects (including this blog post) and finished 4 of them!

My Commitment to Write

Going forward I’m committing to:

1. Write at least 100 words three times a week.

2. Post one blog post every Saturday evening.

I will be writing about whatever I’m learning, dreaming, reading, or thinking about at the moment. If I miss a week, I’ll skip it and get right back to writing unless something truly crazy happens. My goal is to do this in addition to any writing for school I may publish.

Starting small with my first commitment takes advantage of 3 writing principles I try to follow:

1. Rewriting is easier than writing (credit: Jonathon Stark). Just write something.

2. Rewriting produces better writing (credit: James Clear). Then come back a couple times and edit.

3. When you’re writing, write with abandon, don’t edit until you’re done. Then edit ruthlessly.

I will likely write more about rewriting in a future blog post.

That’s all for now. See you in a week 🙂

Photo by Hannah Grace on Unsplash.