Earlier today, after showing him my ‘Beenary‘ post from yesterday, M asked me: “How did you get the motivation to write every day?”

I ended up writing a lot on the topic (apparently I have feelings here), and I wanted to share it with you. (I’ve also said a few things on this topic in a previous post.)[1]

There are a few ways to interpret this question:

1) What started you writing every day?
– I was on vacation for the holidays, and had a few days to just sit on the couch and write, to get me started. Last year, I did some Project Euler problems, this year I decided to write. I ended up making some posts, and a bunch of extra drafts, which I mine when I’m looking for inspiration.

2) Why do you keep writing every day?
– I want to be able to look back and see things I’ve done, both for the feeling of satisfaction, and so I don’t forget things.
– It feels *really* good to finally be releasing (in the software sense) some of the thoughts and ideas that have been kicking around in my head for so many years.
– I know that I now feel like I have something to tell the world…I’m not sure where that changed. I know that when I was writing on LiveJournal, that was not the case, and that’s a lot of what stopped me.
– At the same time, I’m doing this for me more than for others. There was a time in February when my readership dropped by more than half for a week, but I found that it didn’t really change my motivation to write (turns out deleting a post manually (I had mistakenly hit ‘publish’ rather than ‘save draft’) on fb turns off autoposting).
– At some point I would like to write a novel (the category ‘Rollick’ is the closest I’ve come so far), and this is a convenient way to break it down into chunks and get ‘er done.

3) How do you keep writing every day?
– I’ve made it a non-negotiable. I’m allowed to get a day or two ahead, but I’m not allowed to fall behind. It helps that I usually finish them in the late evening for the following day, so I can trade a bit of sleep for writing the post that day.
– I currently have 127 drafts on the go, in addition to hundreds of emails to myself and a bazillion Apple Notes to myself. If that runs out, I have 19 years of journals and five figures of photos to mine for ideas.
– But don’t let that daunt you. After doing this for a bit, I find that I can take some random words and spin a story in about an hour that fills a few hundred words, sometimes more. I often start with puns, or two words which sound the same but are not really related. ‘Bracer, Embrasure’ started this way, I envisioned a hallway with display cases, a thief creeping down the hall, then I fit it into the existing ‘Rollick’ universe.

One thing I’m finding is that I would like to do more more in depth posts, but they are much more difficult to do on a work-during-the-week writing daily schedule. I usually have to give up an hour or more of sleep to get the focus and time required to get one of them done. Not sure how to solve this, other than doing more ‘quicker’ posts and giving myself more time for the more in-depth ones.

Really all of the above is a lot of words to say that I’m doing this because I enjoy doing it, and more fundamentally, I enjoy the act of creation.

[1]For those of you keeping score at home, this will be post 157, daily post #77, meaning I had 80 posts during the previous ~4.5 years. I also have 128 drafts, and 2 of my drafts went to the trash. 4800 emails, and 480 emails in my project folders. I’m releasing faster than I ever have, and the backlog is still piling up. Turns out prioritization is important in everything. (Compare with 5 Jan, where I had just finished my 10th daily post, I had 93 drafts, 0 Trash, 3600 in my inbox, and 400 in my project folder.)