Today is Day 1,462 of my 92-day challenge. In other words, this is the beginning of my fifth year of posting in this space every day.
To recap, for those who’ve just joined us: On Aug. 1, 2020, I quietly began posting every day. Frustrated at years and years of trying to establish a daily blogging habit — and telling people what I was going to do and falling short — I made no announcement at first. I think I finally mentioned it a few weeks in. I just set myself a goal to blog every day for three months, through the end of October, 92 days. When Nov. 1 came along, I just thought, “What the heck, why stop now?” and I haven’t.
This daily challenge has been the single most successful writing project of my career, or at least the most prolonged. As a result of it, I have sent a flurry of books into the world and gained a handful of readers.
But I wanted to be a storyteller when I grow up — or did I? If I really wanted to be a novelist, the novels would have been finished long ago, wouldn’t you think? Maybe I just want to be Cliff Clavin, sitting at the bar and spouting odd references, factoids and random opinions to no one’s amusement.
Still, every so often, a scene will spring from my subconscious featuring the imaginary people there, and the flame will flicker. Just the other day I heard from the Jeep Thompson gang and discovered I had not opened the Jeep file since January — Yipes! But I’ve learned to be thrilled when the story advances rather than frustrated when the story has not advanced for awhile.
As for Year 5 of the rest of my days — wow, is that the commitment now? to offer something every day until I can’t? — It’s not the worst idea I’ve ever had. It keeps me writing, and every so often something that may be worth reading or pursuing pops up from the haze. It keeps me from declining in what are supposedly my declining years.
And if I wasn’t committed to writing every day, who’s to say the Jeep Thompson saga wouldn’t have been abandoned years ago? I might be just another lump on the couch. I keep needing to remind myself they’re “works in progress,” not “unfinished novels.” They’re not officially unfinished novels until, like Schubert, my symphony producing days have ended.
In the meantime, my fingers hold a pen over a blank page, or they tap gently across the keyboard (digression — I remember when you had to exert some energy to get those letters on a page, hence the expression “pound the keys”) and form words. Occasionally the words sing, and often they land with an awkward thud, but the words keep coming, the road goes ever on (to steal Tolkien’s phrase), and I remain curious as to where we’re going next. Isn’t this fun?
