I love writing. I love the creative release that writing is. Being someone who can’t put eloquent words together on the fly, I love the process of carefully crafting words into something beautiful. Lately, I’ve been writing more. I’ve been blogging regularly at my other blog, and have gotten serious about the idea of writing a book.

In all the craziness that is my life, I took on a 15 day writing challenge. It was a gauntlet thrown down by Jeff Goins, one of my favorite bloggers and authors. I did a review of his ebook, You Are a Writer. I thought the writing challenge would be a good follow-up.

What the heck was I thinking? I’m busy and stressed enough. Why am I doing this?

I’m doing this because in all the craziness and stress of life, writing is a release for me. Writing helps me process, communicate, vent, and show the real me to the world.

And I want to be better at it.

I love writing, but it’s difficult. I have something I want to say, but the words are stuck in my brain and I can’t seem to get them on paper or computer screen. That wall, writer’s block if you will, comes up and stops me from creating anything good.

So I took on the challenge.

We’re about a week in, and it hasn’t all been easy.

Day one: declare yourself a writer. One of the biggest things that will trip a writer up is saying that you’re an actual writer. My personal stumbling block? The word “aspiring.” Thinking I was being honest and humble, I called myself an aspiring writer. Then I realized that every time I used that word, I was telling myself I wasn’t a real writer. I’m doing my best to remove that word from my vocabulary. I’ve been working on this for a few weeks, so by the time day one rolled around, I was more comfortable with the words, “I am a writer.” I even wrote a song about it. (Have I mentioned I’m a songwriter, too?)

This challenge might not be too bad.

Then he encouraged everyone to get up two hours early to write.

Um…

I admit, I wasn’t too excited about this part. I’ve been exceptionally exhausted lately, plagued by some ailment that my doctor can’t seem to diagnose. I kind of cheated. I work later in the morning, and have been using my extra morning time to write for a while now. Just not two hours worth.

The part of the challenge that I needed to pay attention to was taking two hours to write. Not check Facebook or read blogs. Write. For two full hours.

I did it. I set that obnoxious alarm for earlier than normal, stumbled into the kitchen to fix my coffee, and then snuggled in with my laptop. I wrote for two hours.

It felt good to push through a bit. I’ve gotten used to writing until I feel l’m done, and then stopping. Sometimes, you’re not done when you’re done. I wrote voraciously for an hour or so, then it got harder. I kept writing. I feel like a lot of what I wrote was crap, but I kept writing. To get to the good stuff, you have to get the crap out of the way first.

I wrote crap for another hour. It was hard, but I felt good when I finished.

I doubt it’s going to get any easier from here.