I probably shouldn’t have used the word nativity just now. I meant it as in, a new birth of a writing life. And I’m a pathetic sucker for alliteration, even if it’s forced, silly, or excessive. Noting a New Beginning seemed a little trite, anyway.
I think what I’m going to do, at least for now, is include four types of activities into my writing day, which habit starts now. Which is why I’m writing it here. It’s a (ok, yeah, mild, but still real) accountability mechanism.
- Journal
- Original/New Writing
- Compiling and Editing Old Writing
- Blog
Journal will be pen and ink, a hopefully sort of Morning Pages Plus. Could be anything from mind-clearing blather to pump priming prose, to notes about whatever I want to note. Commonplace bookish (help me out, Rabbie!)
Original/new writing will be what it says it is. I have some ideas, some thoughts: gonna start setting them down.
Compiling and editing old writing will set me fishing, or perhaps hunting, or maybe panning for gold-ish stuff (likely more mud than nuggets) in this blog, in notebooks of yore and wherever else my past work is hiding out. I’ll transfer them to Scrivener documents which could eventually become books, or could simply remain dumping grounds. It’ll be easier for me to be able to choose to publish. Or for my heirs to locate my writing after I’m naught but a happy memory.
And the blog, this blog, we’ve kept alive, though little used, since 2010-13 when I last wrote. So here’s where I’ll document progress and regress regularly. Eventually daily. At least a few times a week. It’ll be mostly meta messages, words about the words I’m writing elsewhere. I’ll share snippets of real writing here, we’ll see how it goes, but for now, process it’ll be. Partly to keep real writing in the workshop until it’s ready for an audience. Partly to find a way to use this blog: if I waited for a finished product, posts would be precious and few. This way, I can write how it’s going, make a few running edits, and then Bam!, hit the button and publish.
Which is what I’m going to do now.