If you’re looking for a simple, enjoyable way to slow things down, a daily write could be the answer.
February, when the snowdrops are out in force and the daffodils aren’t far away, feels like a better moment to build good habits than the beginning of January. I love winter, but one of the reasons I love it is that it’s a time for stillness, not for starting something new.
Lately, I have taken up sketching. I decided it was time to try looking at the world in a new way. This is a grand way of saying that I cannot draw but am willing to learn. I am so new to it, and I find it so slow and puzzling and just plain hard, that it has forced me to slow down and actually look, to think about what I am really seeing instead of what I think I must be seeing. I predict it may be some time (or frankly it may be never) before I am ready to show any of my sketches to anyone else, but that isn’t the point. The point is the doing of it.
Like drawing, writing is a form of observation (what does this thing I am seeing or doing or experiencing actually look or feel like?). It can also be a form of reflection (what do I really think?). In the panoply of things that are supposed to help with life – mindfulness, exercise, crafting, eating more vegetables – good, old-fashioned writing rarely gets a mention. Yet it’s one of the few things most of us do in some way in our daily lives already, a skill that can quickly be adapted to fulfil a different sort of purpose. In the same way that trying to draw makes you look at pictures differently (not just ‘Wow!’ but ‘How?’), writing makes you read in a new way, appreciating not just the story but the way it’s being told.
The daily write
If you want to go full-tilt, of course, you can write a novel, a memoir, a book about whatever you’re excited by. But for most of us, that’s a pretty tall order. If you’ve never tried writing much beyond emails, the shorter, sweeter option is the daily write. Five minutes a day (less if you feeling sluggish) can be enough to slow you down, sharpen the mind and let you think things out. Think of it as a sort of verbal sketching.
What?
You might want to write a diary, a daily dose of how you feel or what you did. This could be anything from a list in sentences to a full-blown piece of soul-searching. If you don’t want to focus on yourself, then turn your writing to something else and write a daily description. It could be about what the birdsong outside the window sounds like. It could be how your cup of coffee looks. Like painting, writing can and should be able to tackle anything.
Maybe… but how?
The key? Don’t just sling words down on the page. Think carefully and slowly about what they mean. Don’t be afraid to use words that don’t sound conventional (that birdsong doesn’t have to sound like another sound. It could sound like a colour, or a feeling). And don’t write as though you think it’s going to be read: it’s inhibiting, when the point of this is to set you at least a little bit free.
The joy of the daily write is that it is small and simple, at least to start with. You can keep your ‘writes’ and look back at them, or you can chuck them away when you’ve finished. You can type them, or you can use up one of those lovely notebooks that people keep giving you. Start the day with a write, or write before lunch, or close your day with a paragraph. Don’t get too hung up on where and how you think you write ‘best’. Just do it.
The write kind of addiction
A warning: the daily write creeps up on you. Soon, you’ll find you have a full-blown habit on your hands, and then it will start to leak into the rest of your life. You’ll be out for a walk, and you’ll find yourself shaping the words that would describe how it feels to look at that view or smell that freshly cut grass. And if you’re stuck indoors, then writing is another way to take a journey, to look out of yourself and step beyond the here, the now. That’s something all of us could use, I think.
