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My dream is to be a writer. Well, I mean, I am a writer. You are reading things I wrote right now. I publish a weekly newsletter here, too! And I’ve been published in other places as well!

I want to be a professional writer. There. Much better. Getting paid a livable amount of money to do what I do here would be fantastic. On top of that, I also have several ideas for TV shows I’d like to write, a horror movie or two, and possibly even a novel. So where the hell do I begin? Almost certainly by writing more.

I’ve fallen into a bit of a trap with my writing. I’ve got set days that I write my newsletter and script out my podcast episodes, but it’s been a real struggle to write more on top of that. I’m proud of the amount of writing that I do each week. It took me a long time to build up to this point, and now it mostly feels natural. That sets off an alarm in my head. It tells me that I could be doing more, and when I zoom out and look at my goals and my current level of production, I agree. I’m a good writer, I’m consistent, I’m productive, but I still have a ways to go to be the writer that I want to be: a professional.

Particularly when making a livable wage is the bare minimum goal here. I want to be big-time. I think my story ideas are awesome, and I want to tell them in a way that makes the people who watch or read them feel the way that I feel when I watch or read an awesome story. If I’m going to do that, I need to get in the habit of approaching the craft of writing like someone on that level. So here we go.

There are tons of resources on writing out there, but I’m choosing to do Tim Clare’s “Couch To 80k” program because it has a lot of good reviews, and, as a runner, the name reminds me of the “Couch To 5k” programs that have become so popular. The National Centre for Writing describes the program as, “useful for writers at any stage of a project, the writing bootcamp is a series of bite-sized exercises and is particularly useful for writers who are struggling to develop a regular writing habit,” which sounds a hell of a lot like me. The course is delivered via podcast and is intended to take 10 minutes per day over a duration of 8 weeks to complete. Check it out here at Tim’s personal website, along with a lot of other resources. I’ll be documenting my experience here mostly as a way to hold myself accountable! There will be very little editing, so my bad if that bothers you. Loosen up a little.

The first exercise was to write 50 names down. They could be serious names, or they could be funny names. The only caveat was that they had to be completely made up. 10 minutes seemed like overkill for this, but I was hilariously wrong. I became oddly self-conscious, which is actually my number 1 reason for avoiding right. I get pre-embarassed that what I’m going to write is going to suck and drag my feet. So this was a great exercise for confronting that. I became preoccupied with making sure different races and ethnicities were represented on my list of made-up names. Procrastination via wokeness. When Tim’s voice popped back up to let me know that time was up, I had 32 names written down. Oops! I failed. But part of this is learning that failure is a step along the journey of success, and I did write 32 more names than someone who didn’t even try. Day 1 is in the books!