Today’s Random Prompt: Where do you like to do your journaling? At a desk, in your bed, at the coffee shop?
My writing habits are sporadic at best, because I don’t really get paid for doing the kind of writing I love. I freelance for the local newspaper, but I’ll usually procrastinate the writing until the story is pressing up against a deadline because I’m just doing a job, I’m not using all my imagination and creativity.
I did some journaling in high school and college, but considering my state of mind and the things I was doing back then, I’m glad I didn’t save any of it. Maudlin self-pity never makes for good reading.
The thing I love about Blogtober and this latest of Jeff South’s creations in November is the daily discipline to just write one page. I think if I could pull that off every day, I might be able to get a novel draft done in a calendar year.
I have an interesting book called “2,000 Questions About Me” that I started writing on May 11, 2020, but my last entry was #34 on June 8, 2021. Life just gets in the way of writing every day, and if the habit isn’t sustained, you get files like that—cool projects that take off, fizzle, and disappear into the electronic past.
As far as today’s question, where do I write? In my office, either at the college or in the basement of my home, alone and in silence. I would no sooner write in public than I would go Black Friday shopping at Walmart wearing nothing but a Speedo. Writing is a solitary process; we can talk about it after the draft is done, but interruptions can easily sever contact with the Muse, and she’s hard enough to find as it is.
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