Some More Thoughts on Writing This Newsletter
This is issue #30 of On / Off, which means it's time for this newsletter to cycle off for a little while.
After I finished the first 10 issues, I only took a week off before I started up again. I was excited to keep going and I felt strange without my morning writing ritual on the days I took off.
Starting my day with a concrete accomplishment (writing and sending this newsletter) sets a good tone for the rest of my day. If nothing else goes right, at least I wrote the newsletter. If lots of things go right, well, I imagine that's partly due to setting myself up for success by writing the newsletter.
After I wrote issues 11-20, I took about 3 weeks off while I visited the US. But, in between writing issue #20 of this newsletter on September 1st and flying to the US on September 8th, I did something else. I used the time I normally spend on this newsletter to work on other writing projects.
I returned to a personal essay I wrote for a writing class that I took just before the pandemic. I'd been working on edits to it during summer 2020 and stalled out. But, when I returned to it last month, it only took me two hour-long morning writing sessions to polish it up and get it to a point I was happy with. I submitted it to an online literary magazine yesterday. I don't expect that anything will come of that submission, but I'm proud of myself for doing it.
I'm looking forward to using my newsletter time block tomorrow morning (and probably the rest of this week) on a blog post I've been thinking about. I have other essays I wrote for writing classes that I took pre-pandemic, which I stalled out on editing and would like to pick up again. I have an outline for a romance novel that I'd like to flesh out and, of course, there's my memoir, which I worked on diligently from 2017-2019 before letting it lie fallow during the pandemic.
This newsletter has helped me get back into the habit of writing. And it's consistently provided me with the part of writing that I like best: finishing a piece. But I'm excited for On / Off to turn off for a little while so that I can apply what I've learned from this writing project to my other writing projects.
So, I'm taking the next 10 days when I would have written this newsletter off, and I'll be back with issue #31 on November 1st. It might be the start of another 10 issues 'on' or it might be a quick check-in to say that I'm creating amazing stuff during my morning writing block, and the newsletter will be back when I need it. We'll see what happens. Thanks for reading.