June Writing Challenge, A Review

01 Jul, 2024

With today's post, I've completed my goal of hitting 30 publishing deadlines in 30 days.

Much like Douglas Adams, I too love deadlines. Much unlike him, per his claim to have loved "the whooshing noise they make as they go by", I tend to treat deadlines with greater respect.

I hit 'Publish' at 11:58 PM the other day. There's nothing like a good deadline to invigorate me and force me to get stuff done.

I'm proud to have completed this self-imposed challenge. There have been several days this goal when it felt like I had nothing to publish. Forcing myself to put a few thoughts together, I ended up with some posts that I likely would never have written otherwise.

Even if they had been written, despite not having the forcing function to produce them, I doubt I would have published them, owing to a feeling that they were not good enough. I concede that the output of the month has been of uneven quality. On the other hand, some posts ended up coming out quite well, some posts felt quite good to write, and some achieved both.

The month of posts has triggered a number of other ideas, some of which I would like to shape more carefully before putting them out into the world. I found that having to hit publish everyday drove me away from spending energy on those nascent and more challenging ideas, in favour of relatively easier ones.

A publishing habit is not equivalent to a writing habit, as I have learned.

In setting this target for myself, I appear to have fallen prey to the adage, "What gets measured gets managed." I managed my 30 day publishing requirement, but doing so did not build up the consistent daily writing habit I'd envisioned. I found myself typing up posts on my phone late at night, lying in bed, rather than writing by hand at my desk during the daytime.

Perhaps that's a misguided, romantic, idealized conception of the writing process. After all, I've written more this month on my phone than in the past several months at my desk. It might help me to be less prescriptive about the Correct Way to Write¹, and less precious about writing overall.

That's about all I think I've learned from writing throughout June. Onwards to July!