There has been a LOT of life stuff going on in Chez Nolan between the end of Round 2 and gearing up for Round 3. Hubby and I had to make the difficult and heartbreaking decision to put our 14 year old disabled border collie to sleep. We’ve been living with her disability since her stroke 4 years ago, so this wasn’t a sudden thing, and she finally reached a point where she was telling us it was time. So that sucked. And we brought a new edition into the family–a Huskinees or Pyrsky (Husky/Great Pyrenees) puppy. His name is Huck and he’s awesome. Daisy sent us a good one. So we’ve gone from a necessarily pretty sedentary furbaby family to an active puppy household. OMG, it’s been a long time (7 years) since we did this last. Our Malanees (Malamute/Pyrenees) Callie has not decided what to make of all this and has mastered the art of the aggrieved older sister. Plus we’ve had family in town for over a week. Anyway, all that to say that life has been nuts and I, frankly, forgot I needed to write this post until Sunday morning.
As I was searching around for inspiration this morning, I came across this quote. I love this. There’s plenty of talk about excellence being a result of hard work. There’s that whole 10,000 hours to become a master at something. And holy crap, y’all, that sounds like this huge, overwhelming thing. See also: Reasons you can’t think of the mountain and must instead think of each individual step. Anyway, the thing that I loved about this is the idea of excellence as a habit. Because the whole point of habits is that they’re things we don’t think about. There’s a certain degree of automation involved. Whether they’re good or bad things, they’re stuff we do all the time without too much conscious thought. That could run the gamut from flossing to stuffing our faces while watching TV to getting out the door first thing to work out.
So how does this apply to writing?
Whether you think about it or not, you have all sorts of habits surrounding your writing. Where you write. What tools you use to write. How often you write. What kind of music (or not) you listen to when you write. Whether the internet is accessible when you write. Whether you look back at the last thing you wrote before you start. Whether you outline or pants. Whether you have a tendency to make sure you get x, y, z done before you write or whether you attack distractions like a rabid honey badger.
When it comes to writing, your habits can either be detrimental or facilitate excellence. Tweet This
So my challenge to you this round is to answer two questions:
What habits do you have that are detrimental to excellence?
And what habits can you create that facilitate excellence.
With that in mind, STATE YOUR GOALS FOR ROUND 3. For those who are new, write up your goals in a post on your own blog and enter the link in the linky below.
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A Round of Words in 80 Days: The Writing Challenge That Knows You Have A Life 