Sick kids vs. productivity

This week, I had the joy of sick kiddos. Projectile vomit, for those of you who have no kids, is actually projectile. And it hasn't ceased to amaze me, after nearly fifteen years of being a mother, to see a child shoot anything the length of their body. The muscle control... Yeah, no wonder their stomach hurts afterwards.

I guess I didn't go to enough parties in college. Probably I would have learned how amazing the human body was earlier had I just gone to more keggers.

That said, I still managed to get an epic amount of work done. Which brings me to my point...

If you train yourself to expect certain things daily, you will expect them in times of adversity as well.

What the hell do I mean? No worries. I fully intend to explain.

A runner gets up and trains their body to expect to run. If they skip that run, they will feel as crappy as I would if I tried to run five miles. Their body wants that run, that adrenaline rush. Without it, it complains.

The same thing goes for your writing and productivity in whatever goal you set for yourself. If you set the bar about yeaaah high. Every day you hit the bar...

You will find that on days when you feel like crap or when life gets in the way, you are driven to at least hit that bar.

The secret to being a writer, the real secret, really is writing. Every day. Something.

Even if it is just a blog. Even if it is just editing what you wrote yesterday. Even if you are just writing something inane. It trains you to do it and do it daily.

No one that I know of can write an 80/90k book in a day. (And believe me, I know some people with some crazy prolific daily word counts.) But most anyone can write 1k. A lot of people can write 5-7k.

If you do that everyday, how many days before you hit the 90k?

Your first book might just suck.

Really, just like your first marathon run might be challenging just to complete. There is a chance no one will buy it. And even if it doesn't suck and someone buys it, maybe it needs lots of technical stuff overhauled.

But if you fix that stuff and keep writing, you will continue to suck less and less. Until writing is something that comes as naturally as breathing.

Most of my blogs are about 1k long. If you sit and ponder that a little, it sounds long. Daily writing 1k about whatever is going on or writing advice...

But that is what I do. I write.

And you can, too. But it has to be something you are willing to work for.

Okay, happy writing, all.