Some of us remember having to trace letters when we learned cursive in school. You had to literally make your pencil follow the dotted line over the letters. We got graded on it. It was on my freaking report card! Page after page of the entire alphabet…but it worked. I learned cursive. Turns out I don’t need it anymore, but that’s not my point.
In Judo we practice something called “Uchikomi.” The best translation to English is “fitting in.” The theory is if you practice the mechanics of the move over and over enough, you’ll learn the move through familiarity and muscle memory. I use the same approach as Judo and cursive to writing.
The caliber or amount of work is, short term, not as important as the process of writing. Getting the work going, keeping it going, continuing a streak is where the value comes from. Repetition breeds excellence. Routine breeds quality.
Whether it’s 2000 words a day or one sentence doesn’t matter all that much to me. Working, sticking with it…that’s where the meaning is, for me anyway. Besides, one sentence is one sentence more than I had before I sat down in front of a blank screen.
Happy Writing.