They say that one needs to write every day in order to make it a habit. For me, at least, that has turned out to be true.
I remember high school and am amazed at how infrequently I wrote then. I’d write in bursts about one day a week or so, and when I sat down to write, it was often difficult to get going.
Freshman year of college, I grew more dedicated and started making myself write every day, just five hundred words, then a thousand. Today, I can sometimes write five thousand words or more in a day, though the “more” is not a usual occurrence. I think back to high school and realize that writing feels so much easier to me now than it did then.
Of course, that’s a generalized statement. There are still days where I struggle to write anything at all and others where words flies out in what feels like minutes. Overall, though, it’s so much easier, which I try to remind myself on the difficult days.
Now, even when there are a million and one other things that I have to do, I make time to write. As I write this, I’m preparing to move to a new country, and while I’m bogged down with packing, saying goodbye to friends and family, etc., I’ve consistently made time to write. I don’t even know if I can say that I made time. It was the unspoken truth that I would write every day.
In fact, I think times like these are when I need the time to write the most as it helps calm down what is otherwise a stressful time. I don’t know that I would call it an escape necessarily, but it is a crucial part of my daily routine. My day would feel rather empty without it.
Haley Keller 