Consistency is Key 

I’ve been thinking about last year’s New Year’s resolutions. What were they again? Hmm. I know they’re somewhere here on my hard drive. Oh yeah, here they are, filed under Miscellaneous. 

Take the one about writing more consistently. I’d like to write three hours a day on average, but it seems that I take a week off to insert excuse here, then write like a maniac (wow, look at all those words!), followed by another week off (whoa, averaged over three weeks, it’s a lame page count…) 

Then there’s exercise. I keep a Pelotonl chart so there’s no hiding the fact that though I was on that sucker five times this week (way to go!), the last three weeks scored a big fat zero (oops.) 

It seems that exercising and writing have something in common. The longer you take a break, the harder it is to get back into it. We aren’t talking months, or even weeks, here. Mere days off can be a real derailer for both. Relaxation, aka laziness, grows like mold in a petri dish. 

Most writers are familiar with the Ass-in-Chair Rule.  It only makes sense that the more time you put into writing, the more writing you do, and the more writing you do, the better you get at it. With exercising, it’s also about routine. Once you get consistent, it’s much easier to go there than if you start the engine up cold. Author Jane Yolen touches on the similarity with this quote: “Exercise the writing muscle every day, even if it is only a letter, notes, a title list, a character sketch, a journal entry. Writers are like dancers, like athletes. Without that exercise, the muscles seize up.”

Hence, I have decided to take a different approach to my New Year’s resolutions this year: instead of writing them down and forgetting them, then chastising myself for a lack of willpower, I will keep revisiting those babies until I reach my goals. This means it’s back to making writing and exercising a part of each and every day. Besides, Ass-in-Chair and Bod-on-the-Peloton are a perfect match. Word counts and heart rate both need to go up if we writers want to stay spiritually and physically in the zone.

All I need to do is drag that resolution from last year’s file to this year’s. A fresh start, right?