Make the Thing

I'll keep this brief.

I'm inspired to do more in my life, make more, create something. I have little bouts of productivity that leave me drained. I've worked out enough times in my life to know that if you practice, if you keep showing up and doing your thing, then that thing inevitably gets easier. Or, at least it becomes a habit and not an event.

A year ago, a friend of mine spent a year writing a poem a day. In a recent conversation with an old friend, he mentioned a "30 Days of Comics" exercise he completed. He mentioned the merit of just, "Making the thing." Even if it sucks. It struck a chord.

But I'm overwhelmed at which thing to choose to do every day. I'm not a poet. I write longer form stuff. I have a novel, short fiction, and essay drafts littering my home and work space. How would I possibly do a daily exercise that would build any of those projects to completion? I happened to have a folder on my lap containing one short story. I was working on it scene by scene. And that's when it occurred to me: just one scene a day.

It seems low pressure enough to be possible. I'm not writing a whole story or a whole essay or article or anything. I'm just writing the scenes in my head and if I like them, then they'll go in their requisite project. If not, I wrote them in the service of my writing practice.

You won't know all the characters or plots or settings. All that's in my head. I'll tag them, though, per project, for organization's sake.

Here we go. Making things.