OOTD

One Of Those Days…

Yup, I know it’s too warm here for me to actually curl up in a blanket, so you’ll just have to imagine, because I am not a dachshund, who, let’s face it, could be in a blanket in the Sahara and still be cold, but you get my meaning.

Today has been one of those days for me. Waking up, and wanting to lay right back down and go straight off to sleep again and wake up feeling less sucky. We all have those kinds of days (unless you’re just crazy lucky), and today it was mine to experience.

Words aren’t coming easily. I feel like I’m so full of them, and yet, even now that I’m sat down to write, none of them want to actually come out and I feel like I am choking on them. It feels even worse, because the weather is so nice and I love it when it’s bright and sunny, and I’m sat here talking to myself like “What the hell is wrong with you?!”

I have a novel series that I’m working on. I have a Church blog post to write. I have Counselling Coursework to finish, and I can’t summon up the motivation for any of it.

It’s torture not feeling able to write properly, but I made a promise to myself that I would blog every day. I am also embarking on a personal challenge to write 50000 words in July, so I’ve picked myself up and forced myself to sit at my desk and open my laptop.

Today I am mostly following Shaunta Grimes’ advice of teeny tiny goals. Write for ten minutes a day. Even if that’s all you do. If you write for only ten minutes a day, you will amass over an hour of writing time in a week, and chances are, when you actually get started, you will write far more than that anyway.

This is some of the best advice I have ever received, and I am so thankful for it, because if I’m being honest, lately ‘those days’ have been more than normal, but it is difficult to skip ten minutes. I mean, it’s shorter than the average television show.

So, here I am, writing words. They aren’t great words; they may not even make much sense, but they are mine and I am writing them. Today. When every part of me wanted to just stay curled up on the sofa with reruns of Law And Order: SVU on the tv, and a dog curled up far too close for comfort, to keep me warm.

And you know what, it’s now been well over ten minutes, and I’m still writing, so I’m going to chalk that up as a win.

So, if you’re in the same boat as me today, please take the advice Shaunta gives to all the Ninja Writers and just do it (whatever your thing is) for the next ten minutes, and see where it takes you. I promise, no matter how awful it might seem, you’ll wake up tomorrow feeling better because you will know that if you did nothing else yesterday, you got your ten minutes in. You did the thing!