Two hundred

From today, I wanted to give myself a new challenge.

Two hundred words a day. Every day.

Writing is part of how I make a living. An essential part of life as an academic. However, sometimes work activities just carry you away from this important aspect of the job. Teaching, supervision of graduate students, carrying out experiments, administrative tasks – all of these necessities can be distractions that hamper the creative writing process.

But here’s the thing. Writing is a skill that needs to be trained and maintained. It is almost like a creative muscle. If you let it atrophy for some time, even if only for a couple of weeks, you’ll lose the flow. For this reason, it is important to write regularly. I would even stretch and claim that you should write every day. More than a couple of standard e-mail answers preferably. Writing a small piece of text every day will be good for you, regardless of your profession. It will train your creative muscle, it will improve your ease of writing, and it will give you a new purposeful addition to your daily schedule.

There you go.

Two hundred words a day. Every day.

Ready, set, go!