The August Agenda.

By now I am sick of my own "I've had writer's block since November!" posts, and my lack of updates can probably clue you in to how that's going - so instead of telling you just how much not being able to write is driving me crazy, I'm going to tell you what I propose to do about it.

Yesterday I deleted all previous entries on my personal blog so that I could start it from scratch. It was getting to the point (again) where I was only updating for the sake of updating, and I don't want that. I want that blog to be something that I can look back on in the future and be proud of. Right now it also doubles as my website, so I don't want to come across as boring and disorganised (even though at the moment I am) - I want to come across as somebody who knows what she's doing, who you want to know more about. I want to draw readers in, not turn them away. So it was time for a clean-up there. Wish me luck.

With work piling on a little more (I've just been given an extra day) and family dramas ruling my life (I just lost my second grandparent in a six month period), I found myself thinking less and less about my writing Tumblr. Sure, it's not the most important thing in the world, but it was something I started in the hopes of keeping motivated. I find that I often went back to look through the things that I'd posted, but I rarely posted anything new. So this month, I want to update there - with more than just inspiring quotes. A real update. Maybe continue adding to The Journey.

When I was in my last year of high school, my English teacher asked that everybody in my class bring an extra notebook to school for what she liked to call Freewriting - and this is something that I'm about to take up again. Freewriting back then was her way of teaching us to write faster, something that was going to help us when it came to writing during our exams. Basically, for ten minutes or so at the beginning of each lesson, we would just write - stories, journal entries, anything at all. If you ran out of things to write before the time was up, you would just keep writing the last word you had written until something came to mind. For me, Freewriting now is going to be about writing. Just writing. Anything at all, without having a delete button in front of me. Because the delete key and I have been getting far too friendly these past few months.

Lastly, something I've wanted to do for months is set myself a 52 Week Challenge. It's something that I did for my photography - take at least one photo a week, every week, for fifty-two weeks - and I'd like to use it for writing, too. For two reasons: one, so that I'm writing again; and two, because I need to practice short stories. Short stories are one of my weak points, and I would like to improve there. And I'm going to.

Yesterday was the first time I had written anything in ages. It's in a notebook, it was a piece of freewriting, and it felt good. There was no pressure of having readers waiting for an update, no convenient delete key waiting to assist. It felt like the start of my getting back on track, and I can't wait to see if it actually helps.