For an injured athlete, or an astronaut on the International Space Station, the atrophy of unused muscles is a real concern. For a writer, if you’ll forgive my comparison of the brain to a muscle, keeping the creative juices flowing is of equal concern and requires regular exercise. One of my writing habits from 2016 that I intend to continue this year is regular updates on the blog. Now, you may look back at my sporadic posts from the last year and give me the side-eye, but I have multiple blogs, one of which is private, and I did very well keeping it updated on a weekly basis last year. I only missed a few weeks the entire year. You’ll just have to take my word on that. I also participated in a 30-day challenge in June with only marginal success.
But blogging is not the only writing exercise I’ve done – I’ve also engaged my kids to help me. We play a game where I start a story with a single sentence, then they respond with the next sentence, and we alternate back and forth weaving a story that is the product of two minds. I find this exercise especially useful and appealing because I never know where it is going to go from one sentence to the next.
So this year, I hope to continue both of these exercises alongside my development of a sequel, and expand the blogging as well. I also bought a book called The Pocket Muse by Monica Wood in case I run out of topics. So join me, won’t you? I’ll try to keep it interesting.