Make Room for Writing.
I’ve been enjoying the blog Daily Routines lately. Without commentary, it collects accounts of “How writers, artists, and other interesting people organize their days.” I’m glad the site doesn’t update more than once or twice a week, or I would feel bad when I’d have to ignore its RSS feed. Reading about the creative routines of others is pretty interesting to me, and has led me to think about my own writing habits.
When I have time to spare I really like getting to sit down and work a post through one or two drafts, and I actually feel like I’m writing something. Increasingly as of late I’ll take down a few scattered notes of something I’d like to write about, and by the time I am able to come back to it I’ve lost interest, the notes don’t make sense anymore, or the subject has lost relevance.
I feel like each post on this blog needs to meet a certain standard of depth, or at least novelty. If I can’t squeeze a few paragraphs out of an idea, then it must be too fleeting to be of note, and what is this blog for if not to record ideas of note? Part of this problem may lie in the relatively open format of this blog.
With Things I’ve Eaten I tried to create a much more strict environment to write in. I didn’t have to search for something to write about, it was on my plate. I didn’t have to worry that I wasn’t writing often enough, I’m a very hungry person. With support for posting via SMS messages, I didn’t even need to be in front of my computer in order to write.
As a result, I began to think more about what I was eating. It hasn’t really caused me to change my eating habits, but it makes me wonder what my diet looks like from the second person perspective. Conversely, I don’t really worry so much about the quality or content of the posts, because who cares what I’ve eaten?
What I like so much about posting on Things I’ve Eaten is that it brings me closer to writing as part of my daily routine. Ideally I would like to fit this longer kind of exposition into my day (or every other), but doing so may require more discipline and/or free time then I have at my disposal. Then again, I think most people would benefit from more discipline and time in which to practice it.