The Discipline of Daily Writing
I’m a big fan of New Years resolutions.
I’m not always great at keeping them (although I’ve succeeded a few times!), but I love that the end of a calendar year brings about with it reflection on your last year and a renewed sense of optimism for the new year. (At least, it does for me. I hope it does for you.)
This year, I’ve determined that I’m going to finally commit to something I’ve been passively doing, in a less formal sense, for a long time now.
I’m going to write something of substance every day in 2022.
If you want to know more about that decision and what it looks like, read on.
First and foremost, why?
Fantastic question. Why am I writing something every day in 2022?
It’s not because I have tons of time on my hands (ha!).
It’s not because I have a relaxed job that doesn’t challenge me.
It’s not because I need another hobby because the ones I have aren’t plenty enough.
You know what? I’m getting a bit ahead of myself here.
Before I can answer why, I think it’s important that we first define what “writing something of substance” actually means. The what will lead us into why.
What qualifies as writing?
I mean, by some standards, I write something every day already! I don’t think there was a day that went by in 2021 that I didn’t carve out a text, a Facebook Message, an email (or seventeen), a Microsoft Teams message, a blog, a story, a typewritten letter, or any other form of writing—digital or physical.
But only a handful of those will count as writing for my goal in 2022.
Writing something of substance means writing something that I can reference at the end of 2022 as something that tells a story or further shares some of the thoughts that bounce around in my head.
Here’s a small list of things that would qualify as something of substance:
A novel (yep - I think 2022 is the Year of the Novel for me)
Another screenplay
A blog on either this website or my marketing website
A creative retelling of a recent life event / personal blog entry (these don’t get shared publicly—sorry, folks)
An educational book I have in mind about documenting your family / life
Squarely in the “maybe” category of writing something of substance is writing typewritten letters to friends and family. The reason this would count as writing is because it involves time and intentionality (as well as making use of my typewriters—another item of importance to me). The reason it wouldn’t count as writing is because I give it away and can’t refer back to it at the end of 2022.
Things like text messages, long emails; those don’t count as writing something of substance.
I realize that for as long as my definition of what “writing something of substance” is, it’s still somewhat vague and incomplete. This is somewhat by design. Because I’m the one making the rules, I’ll make the judgment about whether something qualifies as writing of substance or not. Ha! If you don’t like that, start your own daily writing challenge and then we’ll talk.
A quick calibration
How long does what I write have to be? I’ll be the judge of that. This blog post, weighing in at an almost 2600 words has taken me the better part of an hour and a half to write. This isn’t a reasonable time investment for the next 365 days.
Mostly, I think the bare minimum goal is 500 words daily. If I succeeded at that, it would mean finishing 2022 having written 182,500 words. That would be pretty cool.
Of course, if I’m going to follow through on some of the writing goals I listed as examples above (novels, screenplays), there are going to be a good number of days that will involve more than 500 words. Maybe I’ll keep a tally of my word count somewhere in an Excel sheet. It would be fun to know how the goal is going every single day.
Why am I writing daily in 2022?
I think we’ve finally gotten far enough into the backstory we can actually begin to answer the big Q. Here are the reasons I’m writing daily in 2022:
1. I believe everyone benefits from the sharing of knowledge.
Not everything I write is intended to benefit the people that read. In fact, the vast majority of my planned writing is selfish (and, I think, has the right to be). But because I know that, in reality, a lot of what I write will fall into the “educational” genre of writing, I think there’s a lot of benefit for anyone that reads it.
I could (and might) write an entire blog on why I think writing is so valuable. Actually, I have done that already (a few times, it would seem).
Writing is sort of like finding a big pile of buried treasure. Say you’re digging and you find a single gold coin. Do you stop digging and call it a day? Heck no! You excavate that entire square mile to make sure you’re leaving nothing behind.
Writing daily is my excavating the entire square mile. It’s the logical next step when you’ve found the hint of something valuable: you keep going until you’ve fully uncovered it.
2. I have a deep desire to be prolific I don’t yet understand.
In 2021, I got really into the music from the Broadway musical Hamilton. I first listened a handful of times in 2020, but it wasn’t until this year that I really fell in love with it and grew an interest in the person of Alexander Hamilton (or at least this fictional and exaggerated version of him).
One of the recurring themes in the show is how non-stop Hamilton is about writing. Why do you write like you’re running out of time? / Write day and night like you’re running out of time? / Every day and night, like you’re running out of time?
Something about that I find so compelling and relatable. I get that manic energy! That need so deep in your soul to just make something that you can’t control your ability to do it. You have to do it or your heart might seize up right there in your chest.
I don’t know that every artist out there wants to be prolific. I don’t think it’s a prerequisite.
You could argue quality over quantity. In fact, I’m a pretty big proponent of that belief.
But I think I’ve had a bit of a mental shift in recent years: that quantity leads to quality. At least quantity with reflection and intention.
I know this is certainly true of me as a wedding photographer (and every other wedding photographer I know). You leave a wedding day with 4000-6000 photos, cull those down to the best 1250, and then edit that further down to the best 850 or so. Further still, maybe 50 of those make it into a blog you post, and 5 of those make it to Instagram. WILD when you do the math.
But when you’re following a wedding photographer online and you see them post the top 5 images of a session of 5000, yeah, they look insanely talented. But you miss the fact that there were 4995 other images the photographer created that you never saw.
I’m hoping and praying my keeper rate will be much higher than that this year, but you get the point.
Another aspect to being prolific that I find quirky and funny:
I love reading about the craft of writing. I love deconstructing writer’s thought processes to better understand them. Sometimes, I don’t even care about what they’re writing: I just want to know how and why they write.
It’s a huge part of the danger in my obsession with collecting typewriters. The day my typewriters become a collection and not an active tool in my daily or weekly life, I’ve failed at the original intention of buying a typewriter: to actually use the bloody thing.
I do not want my love of the act of writing to be confused with actually writing. This is me putting a flag in the ground to say, “I will not just be interested in the idea of writing: I will write.”
Even still, say I manage to accomplish the goal of being a good writer by being a prolific one, where does that leave me? Why does that matter?
Man, I really don’t know. I don’t know why writing is something that entices me so much. But it does! And I think not knowing why you feel compelled to do something can sometimes be a stupid reason not to just do the thing anyways and figure it out later.
I don’t believe (unliked Alexander Hamilton) my desire to be a good writer has anything to do with my legacy. If, at the end of my life, I’ve given my wife the life of her dreams, and given my kids all that I could give them, and given my family and friends all that I could give them, that is far and away enough of a “legacy” for me. I don’t need a library or a street named after me.
There is something intoxicating about the idea of being so great that you’re remembered long after your time. But I don’t think that’s a very good reason in and of itself to attempt it. I’ve seen that it (far too often) comes at the sacrifice of spouse, children, family and friends. And those are 4 things I’m not willing to put below my desire to be prolific or successful in anything.
3. I want to invest my time better.
Given that I try to put 110% of myself into everything, I understand the necessity of taking a break better than you might think.
But I know that relaxation is greedy, and it’s a lot like sleep: no matter how much you get, it never seems to be enough.
That “quick check” of Reddit or Youtube often spirals into an hour or two of wasted time at the end of the day (most days, if I’m telling the truth). I hate that. I think I recognize better than most people that time is a very finite resource, and none of us has a real indication of how much we have left.
Maybe there is an element of being a writer that has to do with legacy. But maybe it can more accurately be described as “not squandering the gift given to me.” If I believe that writing will eventually lead to a better and more accomplished life for myself, I’d be stupid not to do that.
All things in moderation, of course. I’m not vowing to give up Reddit or Youtube entirely. I use them for far more than just wasting my brain at the end of a stressful day. There’s a ton of valuable knowledge on both of those particular websites that I hope to glean.
But not allowing so much of my time to be sucked up by these time-sucks would feel like a huge step in a better direction of my life.
4. I want to know I can do it.
I don’t think of myself as a competitive person. I don’t care that I’ll never be able to play guitar as well as many of my friends, or that I’ll never make as much money as a few of my friends.
But when I do find something I care about—like writing—I want to prove to myself I can do it, if for no other reason than to say, “I did it.”
It’s been on my mind off and on for 10 years to write a novel. The two screenplays I wrote in 2021 were a phenomenal stepping stone to that. I got a small glimpse into the process of writing fiction, and how hard it is to do it well.
Writing a novel sounds like a mountain of a task. Yet there are millions of people that do it every year. I don’t want to wait much longer to be one of them.
From the year we moved to the city of Hamilton in 2014, I started telling Leanne, “One day, before I turn 30, I’m going to photograph the Hamilton Tiger-Cats. Just you wait.” Not only did I tell this regularly to Leanne, I told it to everyone that would listen.
Three years ago, we were shooting a wedding and—lo and behold—one of the guests sitting at our dinner table worked as a social media guy for the Ticats. I immediately, and in the least desperate manner I could muster, begged him to give me the opportunity to photograph them. Two weeks later (to the day), I was on the field shooting the game in the snowy rain, shoes soaked through to the skin 30 minutes before kickoff, having the absolute time of my life. It happened.
Manifestation as a worldview I have some issues with (a lot of them particularly where they contradict that of a Christian worldview), but I think there’s an element of it that makes sense. How is anyone supposed to help you accomplish your dreams if you don’t actually have the willpower to do something to make them happen?
I’m going to be someone who makes something happen.
How I’ll write daily in 2022
Alright alright alright: it’s easy to say you’re going to do something. It’s a whole other thing to actually do the thing.
How am I going to do it? It’s simple.
I’m going to write every day. Period.
How am I going to track it? Well, for that, I’ve got a (typewritten) calendar of the whole year on an 8.5 x 11 hanging up on the wall in my office. The goal is to cross off every single day.
Jerry Seinfeld has had a daily joke-writing goal for a long time (based on some random video I’ve watched a few weeks ago). He said a huge part of his success is to have a daily calendar and cross it off. Then the goal just becomes to not break the streak. You forget about the writing.
That’s my approach to this whole thing. Don’t break the streak.
What if I fail miserably?
Statistically speaking, I probably will.
What am I really made of? Am I a man that follows through on what he starts? Am I a quitter? Am I lazy?
Was this a good goal? Is it as valuable as I believed it would be?
We’re going to find out the answer to all of those questions in the coming weeks and months. I hope you’ll stick around on the journey with me.
The bet I’m all-in on
Here’s what I anticipate happening in the first 31 days of this challenge:
I will quickly find the value in writing something every day.
I will find the challenge difficult and incredibly rewarding.
I will quickly come up with a long list of excuses about why I deserve a day off.
For at least 31 days, I’ll be successful at keeping that list of excuses at bay.
I will craft something I’m really proud of that I had no inkling about prior to starting the challenge.
I will keep my head down and power on.
Think I can do it? Drop me a few words of support in the comments 👇🏻 I’ll need every one of them.
