#JuWriSoMos Reflection, week 8

This past week has been a really good way to move into the second half of this challenge. One of the things that I hoped to do during this challenge was find a way to get over my block about not being able to connect to my writing without having a chunk of a few hours to write in. Previously I would need about an hour to just start connecting to my writing, not really writing anything but just connecting to what I was trying to do.

Since this challenge began and I started to see a shift, I wondered if I would be able to start a thought and run with it until my time was up one day, then return to the same thought the next day and run with it again. That’s something I have never been able to do, complete a thought that was started more than an hour or two ago. So I used this week to test and see if I could do it and feel how it went for me whether I could or not.

Guess what happened? Three days in a row I was able to stop mid-thought when my timer went off, and pick up the thought the next day and get into writing flow to follow that thought some more within a few moments. I purposely changed course after three days and wrote about something else. Partially because I was starting to struggle to step away from the emotional piece of what I was writing, and partially because I want to see if I can go back to the thought I was writing through later. I don’t know if I’ll be able to pick it back up as easily next week or the week after, but the fact that I was able to pick any of the thoughts up the next day is pretty huge for me.

What this tells me is that it’s possible for me to write for a few minutes each day, and actually make progress on any of my projects. I have spent my whole life believing if I didn’t have a few hours to devote to writing, I wouldn’t be able to really connect with it and flow. My whole writing life, that has been true of me.

Halfway through an experiment that began with writing five minutes a day, and I have been able to prove to myself that I can.

I don’t know if I can convey how enormous that is for me, but as a writer and an author who also has about nine million other things going on from one moment to the next, getting a couple of hours away from it all to focus on writing is absolutely impossible anymore. So the idea that I can take a few minutes every day and write something and connect to it… phew!

I am looking back at what I wrote this week, and seeing that I have drafted an outline, dedication, and introduction for a book that’s been on my “idea bookshelf” for about five years. I am excited about what this means for what I can do if I make it a priority in my day.

I recognize that this is a controlled experiment, but it does give me hope that some things that never seemed possible for me before, are possible now.

And that means…

I’ll need to assemble editing and review teams soon!