It’s good to be happy with small accomplishments. That’s the size they come in where my writing is concerned. With just a few days to go, I’m confident I can reach my goal of writing every day this month. More often than not, twenty minutes flew by and I kept on, making it half an hour or two hours or, on one good day, most of the afternoon.
On day one, I had an essay in mind. By day four that essay was abandoned. By the end of the first week, I’d opened up an old project and scribbled some new life into it. Ugly, messy life, the only kind there is at this point. I try and try (and try) to revel in the mess and not worry if it will ever get clean.
Some days, I forgot and then remembered my pledge half a dozen times before finally blathering onto a blank computer page with no more finesse than I blathered into my diary as a teenager. Sometimes writing is therapy. Not every sentence needs to be good. Or clear. Or even a sentence. Because those therapy pages have accomplished something the rest of my writing rarely does. It gets to be complete, having served its purpose entirely.
I’d like to keep up this daily practice. My daily yoga has faltered a bit this week while I tend to an injury. The daily writing will falter as well, I’m sure. But in the spirit of reveling in the mess, I may as well give it a shot. At the very least, the practice of daily writing becomes a kind of daily mindfulness. Pause and sit in the language for a few minutes. Pause and pull the world into words. How can that be anything but good?
Tracy Burkholder 
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