What’s the point of my #30posts challenge? I’m not sure.
I mostly envisioned it mostly as a challenge to myself. I wanted to know that I could create daily content and have it not suck. I also wanted to get in the habit of writing daily because if you’re a writer, writing regularly is important. It’s like exercise. I go to the gym regularly because if I do not, my muscles will atrophy and I will not feel good. Similarly, if I do not write regularly, I stop writing altogether. That leads to a different kind of atrophy.
When I stopped being a full-time writer and moved towards a career in education — and then later into digital/social communications and marketing — I was relieved. I was glad I wouldn’t have to worry about deadlines anymore. I could restructure my life.
Or so I thought. Unsurprisingly, my life didn’t change all that much. Writing deadlines became other deadlines, and these new deadlines weren’t nearly as fun as writing about rock stars. 
I needed a project, something I could sink my teeth into so I could be the old me for a little bit at a time. It initially came in the form of a book project that I worked on from last summer until this past March, when I lost my deal and was released from my contract. (That book will, eventually, come out. I just don’t know when and with which publisher. It has to come out, if only so that the ignominy of having my name and this title still listed on Amazon and at Indigo ends up being worthwhile.)
After that, the only writing I did was on an old manuscript I’d been working on for years. It’s tentatively called In The Wind, and it’s a piece of detective fiction. It’s not super hard-boiled but it’s certainly stylized. It’s about a couple of cops named Donnie and Maura, and a missing friend of theirs.
For a while, I loved working on In The Wind. Then, when summer started being all summery and such, I stopped working on it — it’s hard to write about darkness, crime and grime when it’s sunny and beautiful and your friends want to hang out all the time. I replaced my daily addition to the book with a daily bike ride (of indeterminate length), and while it felt good, I was kind of fucking myself over. Sure enough, every time I came back to In The Wind, I found myself liking it less and less, which caused me to write less and less, which led to that writing atrophy thing.
Maybe this challenge is about that. I mean, it’s most likely about more than that, but if getting down to writing business more often, and with more focus, is something that happens as a result of this little project, it will have been well worth it.
This is the fourth post in my #30posts challenge. Don’t know what that is? Read this.