Happy New Year to you! 2012 has been a wonderful year and I look forward to what is in store for the Year of the Snake. It is in the spirit of hope that I write this entry. With this in mind it makes me recall a year ago when my wife and I went to our gym on New Year’s Day and found it to be packed. We had been going to this gym for several months and had never seen it so packed. As the weeks continued, the parking lot for this gym was filled during the evenings. However, once February rolled around, the parking lot grew sparser and sparser. My wife and I laughed at the visual of the New Year’s Resolution curse. Many people resolve to improve themselves by going to the gym, only to let it die as the weeks progress.
Just like muscle development, writing can be developed through exercise. If you don’t want to succumb to the New Year’s Resolution curse, treat writing in the same way that you treat going to the gym. If you don’t, then your writing can be as flabby as an unexercised muscle.
To be perfectly honest, I feel hypocritical writing this simply because my writing has suffered a lot as of late. I have missed my personal deadline for completing The Demons We Create (the unofficial “sequel” to Demon in My Head) due to my job, marriage, studying three martial arts disciplines, and a near obsession with comic books (aka Life). When my wife asked what my New Year’s Resolution was, my first instinct was to loudly proclaim “TO WRITE MORE!!!” However, the superstitious side of me dared not to utter such a promise in fear of succumbing to the aforementioned “curse”.
However, my resolution would be to make writing a habit. Much like with exercise, writing needs to become a habit. Just as one makes time to put on a pair of socks or turn on the television, one needs to make writing a habit. It should be a habit to exercise. It should be habit to write. By writing this blog, I made myself something to habitually update. I make a habit to post a comment on Facebook (just the innocuous action of typing a few sentences forces me to write something). Even though it isn’t long, the action of writing is important in and of itself.
Just as putting on socks is something I don’t think about (I just do it), writing and exercising needs to be thought of in the exact same way. I shouldn’t think “I need to write today”. I just need to write. In martial arts some refer to this as “Mind-No Mind”. This is the thought that there should be no thought to writing, there should only be writing. If one is thinking: “Gee, I need to write”, or “After this, I’m going to write”, notice that neither statement states that writing will be done. Plus, how many have thought this and haven’t produced a single sentence? You may have had every intention to write, yet without writing, it is not even relevant. Writing – No Writing is all about the action of writing rather than the intention. When suffering from Writer’s Block, my Composition I professor said “Just start writing!” I must concur with his advice (even though when I first heard him say it, it was the most frustrating feeling I’ve ever had). Good luck with your writing ventures.
