It’s a fun project I started last year, and this year I’m looking forward to doing it again. This time focusing on writing.
I write almost every day already in the quiet morning time before my husband and son wake up. I’m pulled to write. It’s not a struggle. It’s how I think and who I am, but I have struggled to move beyond the free-form, longhand writing I do each morning. I want to make something more of the ideas I capture, which means focusing especially on the next step of moving them from the handwritten page to digital form.
I’m not sure exactly what’s been holding me up, internal resistance or just lack of good habits around this part of my writing process, but I’m ready to get to the bottom of it. So I’m making this the singular focus of #the100dayproject for me.
How Will it Work?
I’ll be using an idea borne from my daily writing and pushing it through to the next step — typing it up, expanding, or reworking it. That usually starts with me typing it into a note in Evernote, where I’ve done most of my digital writing and editing in the past. Then, I’ll share photos of both steps on Instagram at @afpalaniz.
The best way to get started on the path to sharing your work is to think about what you want to learn, and make a commitment to learning it in front of others.
Once a day, after you’ve done your day’s work, go back to your documentation and find one piece of your process that you can share.
-Austin Kleon, Show Your Work
I’ll focus on ideas that lend themselves to “short assignments,” a term coined by Anne Lamott in Bird by Bird. Things that fit within her popular image of a “one-inch frame,” at least to start. Something easily contained — an idea encapsulate, a moment described, an image remembered.
Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. A friend of mine says that the first draft is the down draft—you just get it down. The second draft is the up draft—you fix it up.
I finally notice the one-inch picture frame that I put on my desk to remind me of short assignments. It reminds me that all I have to do is to write down as much as I can see through a one-inch picture frame. This is all I have to bite off for the time being.
– Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird
I love the idea of sharing the process of writing. It means focusing on the system, not the outcome. It’s easy to get overly focused on outcomes, but not all of these ideas will make sense to take any further, and that’s ok, good even. I hope that at least a few will lead to blog posts shared here or pitches for publication elsewhere online.
Follow Along
Everything related to the #the100daysproject happens on Instagram. If you’re interested in following my efforts, use the hashtag #100daysofnextsteps. I’ll share an occasional post here about how things are going. Wish me luck!
Thirty-four notebooks filled over 5 years.
