May is for Writing

Every month I’m picking one skill to practice everyday for a month and updating my progress every Monday. I call it Project Incremental. Read up on how it all got started. 

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Lately, the end of the month has been a curious time for me. I’m often staring off into space or making  lots of “hmm” noises. Sometimes, I’m resting my chin in my hand, staring off to the side, and murmuring all at the same time. Why am I acting so weird? I’m trying to decide what I’m going to do for my next monthly Incremental Project. It’s not like I don’t have a list. I just can’t settle on any one thing until a day or two before it’s time to start.

The project for May was obvious but I didn’t realize it at first. Writing. Daily writing at that. There were no less than three things telling me to focus on my writing though there seem a lot more in my head. 

The strongest push came from last week’s 4th Annual Knit and Crochet Blog Week. 7 days worth of blogging about knitting, color, aspirations, and more knitting. I almost didn’t participate but decided to suck it up and try anyway. Last week pushed me to try new things and to think about the blog and my writing in a different way. I made an infographic for the first time and tried a wordless post. The wordless post was the hardest of the whole bunch. I wanted so much to write a few sentences about Trouble the Cat and enjoying curiosity but I let it go for the time being. Not writing made me realize how much I need to write. It’s not a question of wanting to but needing to. 

The second push to writing came from ZenHabits and a timely post entitled, “Why You Should Write Daily”. There was just too much sense for me to ignore.

“The Alchemy of Writing” and its second half were what first put the daily writing idea into my head.  Tim Ferriss interviews Fred Waitzkin, the author behind Searching for Bobby Fisher, about writing and the creative process. It’s inspiring and makes me want to get typing.

Now that I’ve decided to write, the only question that remains is what to write about. It’s Day One and I have no clue. Suggestions are greatly appreciated. The plan so far is to start with OneWord.com as a warm up. You get one word and 60 seconds to write a few sentences. Afterwards, I’m dedicating 15 minutes to writing...something. Maybe I should just randomly bang on the keyboard and see if something intelligible comes out.