There’s a time in the writing process, at the beginning, where it’s just hard.  It’s a lot of effort to write when the story isn’t quite there.

Every day, you struggle to get things moving until you get a rhythm going. At some point, if you’re lucky, you get the snowball effect where the idea starts rolling down the hill, gathering momentum. Getting bigger and bigger.  It goes down easier, and you just basically follow it.

I feel like I’m almost there with my current writing project.

For the last couple of months I’ve been focused on writing at least five days a week. Starting slowly with 100 words a day for a couple of months. Then 200 words a day last month.

This month, I’m aiming for 250 words a day. Not trying to overwhelm myself with commitments but just finding my rhythm.
As I mentioned before, I’m still searching for the story, but now I’m reaching the point where the conversation between characters is becoming a little easier.

I’m beginning to recognize and understand them and getting into the fun part.

I still don’t know the story. I’m still basically listening to conversations with the characters and trying to figure out where it’s going. What will happen.

That excitement of getting caught up in the story and enjoying the writing process means the struggle isn’t there anymore.  It’s just easy.

Most of the time those 250 words come quickly and I’m done.

I could go further, but right now 250 words a day is my 20‑mile march. So I want to stick with that and keep it going for now.

But it’s exhilarating because, after six years, I really sense a return to my creative self.

I lost that feeling—the enjoyment of the creative process. That’s something to explore in another post…

I got here by taking tiny steps.  Deciding that a small word limit would be my focus. And doing the work until inspiration followed.