Maybe it was the city upon the hill that drew my attention. It was more or less a vision for contemplation that captured my attention. A lot of things will need to catch my attention to help spark a 3,000 word a day writing habit. That pretty much means that I need to sit down in front of the keyboard and dedicate a pure hour to the practice of writing. Just like somebody who practices the piano or guitar to improve their skills. The daily writing habit helps to improve writing skills.

Most people do not willfully record and publish their piano or guitar practice sessions. Maybe the guitarist Buckethead is the exception. Brian seems to churn out albums at an unprecedented rate for a guitarist. To keep up with that type of prodigious creativity I would have to encourage and embrace my tendency to engage in stream of conscious writing. That is a relatively easy thing to accomplish.

It works the same every time. You sit down and start to write. Whatever comes to mind is where you start. From that point in time you just focus on embracing the practice of writing and let the words take you forward. My general state of momentum helps me embrace striving forward. Focusing on the past and dwelling on things can be a part of being a reflective practitioner, but it has to be couched within a guiding principle that involves striving forward. Improving, learning, and refining strategy are all good things to do based on past results. Over thinking things and just remaining in the intellectual weeds of the past does not really benefit the future.

Inherent within the struggle of striving forward is the next step. That step informed by the last but independent. Each step powered by good intentions. We tend to keep striving forward. To write 3,000 words per hours you have to pretty much surrender all reservations and just go with it. Writing for the sake of writing. Each impulse converted into words and plastered on the page. Making that happen involves just going. You pretty much have to let your mind focus on the task of writing and stay in that creative pocket for as long as you can.

Distractions are pretty much inevitable. Life involves so many factors that push and pull on your time. Dedicating an hour a day to writing for the pure purpose of writing used to be something that was a part of my daily routine. Every night before going to bed a writing session would occur. Some of those sessions were much more productive than hours and that is ok. Sometimes gold pours out and sometimes it does not. Part of the process is striving forward and embracing the good days and trying to get as much out of the great days as a possible.

Writing with citations and in a proper academic style typically takes longer. Some topics I can write about and cite as i got without picking up books. That harkens back to the time I spent writing and reading about civility and social capital. I remember the thrill of just finding a library shelf and reading every book related to the topic at hand. That type of reading is oddly satisfying. Understanding how different contributors to the academy took on challenging topics and how they dealt with them in print helped me understand topics in a deeper way.

Some of my more satisfying writing sessions have involved writing either short stories or fiction chapters. It has been a long time since I had the time to sit down and just writing a story. Being in the habit of writing tends to help me produce a wide variety of different things. Focusing in on one topic for 3,000 words would really help ensure a great degree of depth vs. the breath introduced by jumping around from topic to topic. Reading disjointed prose probably won’t be fulfilling. It probably will not be fulfilling for the writer either.

Taking the time to truly think about something in a deep and meaningful way can be fulfilling. For example, I could write about the rise and inevitable fall of the National Football League. That topic probably has enough ground to cover to fill several volumes of notebooks. A large portion of the population probably has an opinion on the subject. It would probably end up being somewhat controversial in parts based we just don’t agree on anything anymore. Spending the time to write about the nature of truth in general and just how hard it is to gain agreement anymore might be a better use of my time. That type of treatise about the nature of truth would be a great inquiry, but it would probably also be less readable.