Monday 26 December 2011

Holiday Writing Challenge

Making time for writing—especially when it isn’t your primary profession—is difficult at the best of times.  Every member of my writers’ circle has other obligations year-round—family, work, school, other hobbies—but we all have our own ways of making time.  This could mean waiting up until kids have gone to bed, then writing for an hour or so before turning in yourself; snatching ten minutes here, then minutes there between classes; frantically one-finger-tapping with one hand while you hold your lunch in the other.  Whatever the typical method is, the holiday season makes it exponentially more difficult to find time. 

I had intended to have the second chapter of Underground finished by now, with only editing to concern me between Christmas and New Year’s.  Unfortunately, this hasn’t happened.  I returned home after my final exam—Advanced Issues in Contracts—and found my calendar full of dates with friends.  I really ought to have realized this before setting my arbitrary deadline—after all, I was the one who made the dates—but it never occurred to me that by the end of the day, the effort involved in sitting down to write would be just a bit too much—and the idea of watching Big Bang and Murdoch Mysteries re-runs with my family just a little too tempting.  So, here I sit, on Boxing Day, preparing for one last family Christmas get-together, with no more writing done than I had before exams started. 

One of the ladies in my writers’ circle, recognizing the difficulties of holiday writing, has challenged our entire group to keep track of the number of words we write each day.  We’ve been emailing out the results each evening to the group list, and, while a number of people in the group have had impressive word counts, I’m feeling a little ashamed of all my zeros. 

So, here is my challenge:  Every day, from now until New Year’s, I will post the results of my writing for the day (the word count, not the actual writing, as you’ll hopefully see that soon enough on the website!)  In addition, I challenge any writers who are following this blog—whether you write novels, short stories, poetry, non-fiction, scripts, or even music—to post their writing results in the comment box of each results post.  We’ll be each other’s accountability. 

Good luck to all, and I hope to see some writing done!  Merry Christmas—belated though the wish is!

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