Putting words on the page

You know those funny moments which happen and make you pause and just wonder at the size and reach of the universe and its serendipitous little happenings.

I started writing the first book in my trilogy in February last year, two chapters in and then I got caught up with MBA study and a whole heap of other things and it went to the bottom of my list of things to do.

It's a novel set in the Adelaide Hills and is a love story based around sensory magic and the opening chapter starts out with an evacuation because of a bush fire. Now you can see glimmers of similarity with recent events in Adelaide and the Sampson Flat bushfires.

But this is Adelaide and after all, bush fires aren't that uncommon unfortunately. The recent fires did however give me a prod to pull my book out again and start reading it to see where I'd gotten to with it. Now for the strangest bit, the main character has gone to check in at the football club which is the evacuation point and when asked for the street she was evacuated from, it's Sampson Court.

I know it's something small, but it kind of freaked me out momentarily that something I started writing 11 months ago and have not touched much since then, has these little surprise elements. I've never been to Sampson Flat, I'd never heard of it before the recent bush fires and of the million street names I could have chosen, I chose Sampson Court.

So what I will do is take this little message from the universe as a sign that I do need to write this book and hot damn if I didn't fall in love with it all over again when I started reading it. I like it and I need to write it.

I have the first chapter of the second book in the series already written as well and I loved them both then when I wrote them, I'm just not sure why I let them sit for so long. Yes I can blame study and life, but I also let fear and procrastination get in the way too.

I've already written a book from start to finish and proved that I really can do it, I think the first one took me two years, but really only 6 months of concerted effort once I decided to actually stop making excuses and just do it.

The reality is that you have to keep doing something to get better at doing it. I have to make a habit of writing to be a writer. I have to decide to just do it and then get on with it.

So that's what I'm doing, deciding to write my next book and making a habit of doing it. It's now a habit to walk on my treadmill every morning, to write in my journal every morning and to go to the gym twice a week. Writing needs to become a daily habit.

I'm going to share this again, it's a free e-book that got me on the right track to start with James Clear and then James led me to this book The Power of Habit - Charles Duhigg. I have to go and read them both again and remind myself of some of the important parts.

Maybe you'll find some needed wisdom in one of them to help you if changing your habits is something on your list of things to do this year. 

As for me I'm off to do some more writing, after all it supposedly takes 21 days to make a new habit.

Cheers, Fi