24 Mar 30 DAYS OF WRITING Days 21 – 30
30 DAYS OF WRITING DAYS 21-30
Welcome to my 30 day challenge. Here I’m hosting a video blog / diary to assist me in my writing process. The challenge is to do at least an hour of writing or working on my book every day for the remaining 10 of these 30 days. I can tell you that I have written almost every day until now but have not always been able to put in a full hour. Creating, producing and publishing these little video clips seems to take an average of 2-3 hours per day so that’s cutting into my writing time a little. But I’m OK with that because it’s the creation of these videos that is keeping me writing. Enjoy the videos and contact me if you have any questions. I’m available to deliver talks and workshops on creativity, innovation and Unexpected Connections.
Day 21 Work On Your Own Happiness
Even those of us who come across as super positive need to work on staying happy. My online presentation to the world is quite positive, but as we all know, what’s online is not necessarily representing the whole truth. I choose to share mostly positive news about my life and career experience because I feel that better suits myself and those who I am in contact with. But just because that’s what I show online, it does not mean that I never experience challenging times. I do.
I think that the reason I can maintain such a positive outlook is that I put some effort into it. I do my best to be as positive as possible when out in the world because I know how we can affect other people’s moods and thinking by how we act. Here is today’s video.
Stay healthy, stay happy.
Happy International Day Of Happiness!
Day 21 Work On Your Own Happiness
Day 22 Learn From Those Who Have Already Done It
A talented professional. Andrea Menard
Today was another excellent and jam packed day of learning and sharing with the Fast Track group at the
Calgary chapter of the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers (CAPS). We shared all kinds of tips about social media and the speakers were fantastic. I look forward to next months sessions and had a really good time today learning all kinds of new good stuff.
This day went from 8am until 10.30 pm if you include the house concert / party after at Alvin and Darlene Law’s house so I did not do any writing today. I believe that I still moved my book project forward however by spending time with many published authors and learning from other professional speakers who are a few years ahead of me in my field. Here’s my accountability video for today.
Day 22 Learn From Those Who Have Already Done It
Day 23 Challenges Can Turn Into Satisfaction
As the writing continues, I feel that I was supercharged because of yesterday’s wonderful day of learning with the Calgary chapter of CAPS – the Canadian Association of Professional Speakers.
Today’s writing was fun and satisfying. I’m finding that in general this project is becoming more fun and more satisfying. That just goes to show that big challenges can turn into satisfying experiences (eventually).
This is today’s video here from my kitchen.
Day 23 Challenges Can Turn Into Satisfaction
Day 24 Bridge Your Stories Together
There comes a point in the writing process when you’ve got to bring it all together. I was struck not only by the aesthetics of the +15 walkway in Calgary, but also by how I could relate it to the current stage of the writing process that I am in.
So that’s how today’s video was created. As I continue to go through all of my writing, I’m now moving material around into certain themes that will eventually evolve into chapters. In order to do this, some of what I’m doing is connecting the stories together. That serves as the message for today.
Day 24 Bridge Your Stories Together
Day 25 Feeling Overwhelmed? Double Up On Self Love
It may seem counter-intuitive to take a rest when you are feeling overwhelmed by too much work or when there are far too many things to do. But experience has taught me that sometimes, that’s the best thing to do.
This morning my mind was racing as soon as I awoke so I decided to take it extra easy to solve this. It worked. In fact today, I did a meditation (this does not happen so often), I went to Yoga (also not yet quite a regular part of my routine), had a solid workout in the gym, did some reading and generally just took really good care of myself.
Once I’d done a bunch of those things I was perfectly relaxed and more productive than I would have been had I just raced into the day’s tasks. When I’ve done that in the past, I often run out of steam and feel disappointed when I don’t complete everything. Instead tonight I’ll rest knowing I did what I could AND I was able to take care of myself in the process. So the message for today is…
Day 25 Feeling Overwhelmed? Double Up On Self Love
Day 26 Entrepreneurs Need Support
It’s excellent being an entrepreneur, but it’s not always easy. Use a tip or a trick, or a coach or a poach to help get the things done that you need to do.
Today was a day when I completely did NOT want to work on my book project. The weather was so sensational that I just wanted to cycle, read and relax. In fact I did all of those things but because of the 30 day challenge I also got my writing done.
As creativity requires restrictions I’ve found that this challenge has really helped me get much more done that I would have had I just scheduled a time every day to work on it I need these boundaries (rules) to get me to produce sometimes – even if it’s not always enjoyable.
Reminds me of being a teenager.
Thanks for watching today’s video.
Day 26 Entrepreneurs Need Support
Day 27 Be True To Yourself
It’s pretty easy to get worried about and caught up in what’s going on with the competition in just about any field. And while that’s certainly important for many reasons, when it comes to a creative process such as writing, I argue that it just might not be so important.
One of the things that I’ve learned through this writing process is that it’s more important to just be authentic and true to your self while getting all of that material out. You can worry about the competition another time. Until now, I’ve been my greatest competition at just getting this project close to done! So the message in today’s accountability video is:
Day 27 Be True To Yourself
Day 28 Take Risks
I don’t know much about life but I know a few things. And one of those things is that you have to find the courage to take risks to get ahead. These don’t have to be incredible “life changing” risks, but they can be. I’ve found that some of the biggest risks I’ve taken have yielded some of the greatest rewards. So on this 28th day of my writing challenge from the edge of Calgary today’s video says…
Day 28 Take Risks
Day 29 Get Inspired
While I confess that I have not done my writing today, I’m ok with that because I know how important it is to take a break and to do the things that serve your soul. For me, that’s snowboarding. I had not been to the mountains for 6 weeks and finally got an opportunity to hit the slopes.
Lake Louise provided exactly what we were after on this day. The conditions were great – considering this fairly poor season – and we had some fun. Taking these breaks can feed your creative spark making your overall production better.
Take time to do the things that you love to do in life no matter where you are in your career or challenges. As Ferris Bueler once said, “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it”. Here’s today’s accountability video from the mountains!
Day 29 Get Inspired
Day 30 – Love Life
It’s Day 30 of my writing challenge and I believe that I’ve actually worked on my book project for about 20 hours this month. The goal was to put in at least an hour per day and I really thought that by just getting things moving I’d work on in much more than that, but that has not been the case.
Instead, the trick I did to just keep me going became the primary time consumer in this project – the creation of a video journal to document what I had done each day. Initially as my coach had suggested, the use of a video journal was simply to keep me writing and to keep me moving forward. But very quickly the video creation became the focus of the project. I was still able to work on the book itself almost every day but not consistently for an hour. I believe that if I was actually doing the bulk of the writing during this time then I would have been able to work on it an hour a day or more. But in my case most of the writing had been completed over the past 3 years and what I’ve been doing most of these days is just bringing all of that material together and getting it organized.
I’m okay with the fact that I put in a good chunk of time and effort to both the writing and the videos about the writing. For most of the videos in this challenge, I spent between 1 and 2 hours per day creating, editing and publishing each of them. This was quite a dramatic improvement from the videos in my recent 30LESSONSFROM30S challenge. In that challenge I invested on average 2 – 5 hours per day with the video creation / production. This 30 day challenge took me 34 days to complete.
So what did I ACTUALLY accomplish with this 30DAYSOFWRITING challenge?
- I went through over 165,000 of online journal entries / previous writings on my 750words.com account to draw out just over 45,000 of useful words for material for the book.
- I worked with my coach to accomplish more than I had planned to.
- I went through over 20,000 words of old blog posts for a further 5000 words of appropriate stories and material for my book.
- After getting discouraged a couple of times had some great meetings with my editor who helped move me along and guide me.
- I created 23 chapters / themes drafted that are ready for some editing!!
- I completed a very rough manuscript!!!
- I have an additional 30 videos on my YouTube channel which this past week surpassed 40,000 views.
Although there is still plenty of work left to do on the book project, I have a sense of completion with this challenge. It was a stimulating and challenging project for my mind.
So all in all, I’d say that this challenge was a success. But please don’t think that it came without it’s challenges. Because it did. On more than one occasion I very much did not want to do the writing that I had to do and I had to force myself to do that work. There were times when I also did not want to create a video as well, but I did so anyhow.
These 30 day challenges are time consuming but I’ve found that they consistently push me to accomplish more in a short period of time than I normally think possible. It’s helped me remain focused on one important thing for a full month and has allowed me to get properly immersed in the process.
I hope that you’ve enjoyed this video series and wish you all the best with either your own writing process or your own 30 day challenge. I’d love to hear how it goes. If you know of anyone who could benefit from this, please pass it along.
Day 30 – Love Life