How many hundred 750 Words writers are starting today's writing mentioning the date. Yes, it is the beginning of the year. Yes, it is the first of the month. And yes, it is a beginning. That is okay. Beginnings are a good place to start. Start your week, your month, your year of writing, today. Yes, start. That is what is important. Is writing necessary to you? Do you have things to say? Is expression vital to you? By all means, start writing!
Personally, I would like to invite everyone I know, who has any interest in writing, to use New Year's Day as an excuse to begin writing as a habit. It will take about thirty or more days for it to begin the habit of writing. There is a website called 750words.com. It is a convenient place to start that habit. Whether you want to write a journal, a novel, some poetry, an article, or maybe a wikipedia article, 750words.com is a good place to begin those pieces. You can store the writing, here. It will count your words for you. It gives you an automatic community of writers, where you can be a member.
You, who may never have been published. You, who may have never belonged to any writing group. Or, on the other hand, you, who have written three novels that you cannot get published. Or you, who write in your journal every day since you were ten years old, may need some encouragement. Or, as I implied above, you, who have something to say, can and should say it here.
Today, I write. Today, I tell myself, I will begin to write everyday, for a week, month, or, if I am disciplined, a year. Yes, I will write 750 words or more, every day that I can, for as many days in a row that I can. Yes, I will. I have that many thoughts and words inside me, that are bubbling to the surface, daily, for many days in a row. The row is not important. How many is not important. Those percolating thoughts put into words are what need to be put down for whoever might read them. It might only be you. It might be 500,000 reading it online.
New Year's Day is a fine day to start anything. Maybe I will take one or more photographs, everyday for the next year as well. I could be quite busy. Write 750 words, minimally, daily, and take a photo or more, daily, everyday, from now until January 1, 2015. It sounds very doable. Looking back over the last year, 365 days will go by in a flurry, and next year will be here in a couple of shakes of the head.
What will I have accomplished. If nobody notices, nobody reads what I've written, nobody sees my photos, did I do anything? Perhaps, but that would be the most negative and discouraging way of looking at it. Minimally, if I write and photograph daily, for hundreds of days, I will have much more experience in both. Anybody doing something like writing or taking photos daily, for any prolonged period, is going to get better at it, if only by doing it slightly faster. Any awareness of increasing quality while performing regularly, will produce increased quality.
I would invite anybody, who practices any skill, to begin to practice it with more regularity, today, January 1, 2014. Then continue on January 2nd, 3rd, and continue. If you have not shown yourself as much discipline as you know you need to accomplish your goals, start practicing today. Then do it again, tomorrow. Is it important to you to get better? Do a third day. Do you really want to get good. Do it a twelfth day. How expert do you want to be? Do it a thirtieth day. Go. Be you. Develop your skill. Make it yours.
That's it. I am not going to encourage you more. It really has to come from within you. If it does not, you may quit on day six. Ask yourself, how important is what you want. For someone to give it to you is just not as important as you conceiving of it, thinking about it, and making it come to pass. To not do it is failure.
These are really my words to myself. I write to myself. Write more. Write more frequently. Write more originally. Write more imaginatively. Write more tightly, more efficiently. Be more interesting. Be more compelling. Write like your life depends on it.
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