August 2019 #Challenge: Morning Pages & Evening Story Time | #amwriting

I’ve been saying for a couple of years that “someday,” I’ll get Julia Cameron’s book The Artist’s Way and work through it to see if I can regain my love and passion for writing. As Karamo Brown taught us in an episode of Queer Eye: Today. Not someday.

Because of the way I have my planner set up, my “months” go by weeks (Monday — Sunday), which means that for me, August started today (Monday, August 5) since days 1-4 of the month were included in my July weekly planner spreads. So my August challenge will run from Monday August 5 through Sunday September 1.

I have two main goals for these four weeks:

1. Work through The Artist’s Way.
2. Spend at least 30 scheduled minutes each evening working on a story (writing, developing story or character ideas, etc.).

The main thing I’ll be doing daily from The Artist’s Way is the practice of Morning Pages. And, although I did mean to start morning pages today . . . well, you know what the say paving roads with intentions leads. But I do have the book sitting here, staring me in the face, reminding me all day that I have a date with it tonight.

What Are Morning Pages?

Morning Pages are three pages of longhand, stream of consciousness writing, done first thing in the morning. *There is no wrong way to do Morning Pages*––they are not high art. They are not even “writing.” They are about anything and everything that crosses your mind– and they are for your eyes only. Morning Pages provoke, clarify, comfort, cajole, prioritize and synchronize the day at hand. Do not over-think Morning Pages: just put three pages of anything on the page…and then do three more pages tomorrow.
(Cameron, Julia. “Morning Pages.”)
[See also, “Why By Hand?”]

Evening Story Time
While the exercise of coming up with a fiction-related idea for each day of last month was a great exercise, it still didn’t motivate me to actually start writing. So this challenge will be broken down into a few goals that will, hopefully, lead me to actually start getting into writing a story. The first goal is to narrow down my multitude of ideas into two or three that really interest me (one day) and then spend the rest of the week fleshing out the ideas: writing a longer story summary, creating/casting characters, doing some research if warranted, and other foundational tasks. Then, by the end of this first week, I will decide which story idea I want to work on for the rest of the month, and I will focus on it during my scheduled creative time each evening (currently scheduled for 9 PM Central each evening, but that may be adjusted on evenings when I have events/plans). This may mean actually writing scenes/chapters, it may mean writing character backstories, it may mean world building. It doesn’t matter what the task is, as long as I spend at least thirty uninterrupted minutes focused on it.

A Return to Regular Blogging
While I didn’t mention this above as a goal for August, since it’s not fiction-writing related, it is writing-related in general. Another goal I’ve set for this month is to blog at least twice each week. So be sure to keep me accountable on that one!
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What’s Your Challenge for August?

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