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This writing every day thing reminds me of when I was doing NaNoWriMo, the yearly attempt (though only twice tried by me) to write a novel in a month. At least this time there's no word count constraint.

I don't like constraints. Who does? The theory is that we all do in the right context. To understand why, you need to stop thinking like a Mexican and start thinking like a Donald. The wall isn't to keep you out, it's to keep others from getting in. The "others" in the case of a discipline of daily writing are feelings that you don't want to be doing this. I'm talking about what I wrote in my October third post--the Bad Idea one.

More accurately, the feelings still get through, but acting on them is kept out. I had the feelings today, and they slowed down my start, but I started none the less, and now I'm getting into it. It's like when I used to run every day. I knew the first mile would be difficult and I'd remind myself (almost continually!) that it would feel less bad later while running that first mile. And, most often, it did start to feel OK as I passed the one mile marker, more or less.

Some of the OK was provided by a feeling of accomplishment and the rest was the diminished pain as my body began to wake up (it was a first thing in the morning activity.) Over time it became a habit, part of how I would wake my body up at the start of a day.

By analogizing with NaNoWriMo, I'm saying I could stop after a month. And to do the analogy right, it's "NaBloWriMo" but the other sounded batter. Besides The Na part (National) is false anyway--since it's international, but they kept the old name because it sounded better.

I haven't yet decided if I will stop after a month. I could stop and start a novel at that point since it would then be November, when NaNoWriMo is scheduled to start. It's too early to make these kinds of decisions. It would be like deciding about my running plans during that first, atypically difficult mile.

At the moment, having an only one month commitment is a comfort. It was not part of the original plan but, with the help of today's analogy, I could tack it on and make it look like it belongs there.