Whatever You Want to Do, Make it a Habit

The lights on the Christmas tree flickered, changing from one colour to another. He sat there on his couch watching them. As he stared, it seemed that the lights all blended together into one big blob of light. He knew it was just the way that his eyes and his brain were processing the light because he had stared at them for so long, but it was a cool effect anyway.

He finally managed to pry his eyes away from the lights and picked up his pencil and notebook that were sitting on the coffee table in front of it. Not for any reason to be honest. It's not like he had a sudden flash of inspiration or an idea that was burning to get out. It was more an automatic movement. He turned to an empty page and started writing down words.

He wrote for about 15 minutes. It made a little bit of sense but not much. He closed the book and smiled because at least he had written something down. It was shit, but it was something. The next day he did the same thing, and the day after that, and the day after that. Not only was what he wrote down better, but the physical act of writing was better. The muscle memory from writing day in and day out was starting to show results both in quality and in the ease in which it came to him.

Writing down what seemed to be non-sensical combinations of words had led him to have more ideas. It was like branches on a tree. Ideas came branching out from all over the place and led to writing that had an actual plot, structure, and meaning. Not every day of course, because some days we just don't have it. Those are the days that he made sure to write SOMETHING. The last thing he wanted was to fall into that trap again of not writing anything.

Doing anything repeatedly and consistently will ensure that you get better at it and that it becomes easier. It could be playing the guitar, painting, cooking, sex, or anything else that you want to get better at. As a matter of fact, I was stuck about something to write about today and looked at the lights on my Christmas tree and wrote down the first line. This short story is what I ended up with. It's not great, but I fought through the writer's block and got something written down.

Whatever you want to do, just get started. And keep doing it.

--

Please upvote and follow if you enjoyed this. I always follow back!

You can also find me on Facebook at https://facebook.com/scottwgardiner