This current writing streak has covered the majority of the month of July. Part of extending this current writing streak will be about continuing to sustain the focus and routine. While it is barely the start of the day here in Denver the sun is already up. According to Google the official sunrise was 0548 hours which is very early in the day for things to get going. Even the dogs went right back to bed after I got up and made espresso shots. I spent some time messing around with my fountain pen yesterday. A couple of years ago I started a collection of fountain pens. The rest of them are stored in a zipper pouch having been cleaned and put away. You have to use them on a regular basis or problems ensue. I went a couple weeks without using my main fountain pen and the ink will not flow. My main writing instrument is a Parker Sonnet fountain pen with a medium nib. It was manufactured in France and has been my favorite fountain pen for years. Currently we are at a point where my fountain pen needs to be cleaned. That is a point in the life cycle of owning fountain pens that I generally try to avoid. It would have been better to keep using it on a regular basis and not run into this situation. 

Maybe the same could be said about the writing process. You have to keep using your writing skills on a daily basis or you get to the point where you need to work out some of the stagnation and get a bit of a cleaning out of the way. Sometimes that could be equated with a false start in terms of writing. The production of bad prose happens from time to time and it certainly could be called a false start or maybe just poor execution. Writers write. You have to sit down and do the work to be a writer. It does not happen in any other way. Unfortunately, not every writing session begins and ends with spinning golden prose. The other side of that coin is also important. In those precious moments of spinning golden prose it is best not to stop those writing sessions prematurely. You have to know when you are in the writing zone and do your very best to focus those golden hours on the right things. A spark of inspiration will strike from time to time and you have to take advantage of those times. They are the ones you have to cultivate and utilize to the best of your advantage. More often than not the process of writing is about being the prompt and just working along a bit a time as part of the process. Following that process is how you open the door to the daily routine of creating output. You have certainly seen evidence of that process across the thousands of words being stored in this latest Microsoft Word document format .DOCX file where I’m keeping posts.