A Writer's Notebook, Day One-Thousand-Four-Hundred-And-Forty-Eight

One thing that I am quite certain about is the need to keep focusing on my writing each day.  This is true in a number of difference ways.  First, I mean it in the largest and most general, in terms of my practice, my dedication to writing each day.  For me, the center of that practice tends to be my poetry, and I do feel that I gain a great deal writing poetry every day.  Also, as someone who had a good deal of trouble training myself to write without any external accountability, it is an important to me that I keep going and don't lose this momentum.  I know that it has happened on a few occasions that, for one reason or another, I have neglected my work for a day, but in general, I have kept this practice going.  It is an important part of my daily routine now and I feel it gives me a sense that I am at least accomplishing something, if only in the sense of having done this work.  But, for me, their is also a way in which I feel that writing on a larger project often needs to be a daily practice, at least until it reaches a certain point.  At the moment, I have two large projects that I am attempting to get through, one being my prose piece, which is very long at this point and which I have been able to step away from several times now without losing site of it.  I think a large part of the reason I have done well with going back to that is the size of the piece already, as it is big enough that I know I have something of substance their.  In the other case, it is the story that I have been writing the last several weeks.  It is not all that long yet, just a few pages, so I don't yet have that same sense of cohesion and mass, that it is at a point where it has its own existence already, and I think that working on it daily is important right now, as it helps to reaffirm my commitment to the piece in particular, so I don't just leave it half finished as I have a few stories in the past.  I am letting it unfold and develop, and I think that becomes more difficult if one lets too much time pass.  Working on it each day keeps me invested and connected, so I don't just lose sight of where I am trying to go with it.  Maybe it is more just that I am doing the writing and the rest is just imagined, but even if that is the case, it still seems easier when I return to it each day.

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