That 500 Word Thing.

January is a time for new beginnings. I know a lot of people probably get sick of hearing that, but it’s true, and I love it. There’s something inspiring about getting to start over with a brand new year!

My husband and I take it pretty seriously these days. The last few years my in-laws have taken the kids for a few days after Christmas so Mark and I tend to use these days to celebrate our anniversary (which is Christmas Day), celebrate my birthday (which is the 27th), and to think about the year we are wrapping up and the year fast approaching. It’s peaceful, productive, fun, and we usually come out of those days with a better idea about what we are aiming toward with our lives and our family.

This past year I really struggled to write as much as I’d like. Yes, I did a 12-month blog series (minus the 12th month still), and I’m really glad I did. I wrote a book proposal that has yet to go anywhere and needs some major revisions (long story). But I still feel the pull to write more, to get better at it, and to build a better habit out of writing every day. I’m sure that I do write something every day, between homeschooling, tutoring Essentials, being on various channels of social media, but it’s not the kind of writing I feel like I need to practice.

My writer-friend Astrid once did a 500 word daily writing challenge through Jeff Goins’ blog and had casually mentioned a few years back that I should try it. It seemed like way too much for me - I’m terrible with anything you are supposed to do daily! But this year I want to stop being so afraid of self-discipline. It will only make me better, right? I want to stop avoiding hard work when I know 100% that what lies on the other side will benefit me.

So here’s a little picture of what my blog will look like in January…

A post every week-day, and maybe on the weekends :) Easy as that. I don’t have a theme I’ll be sticking to, although I am hoping some of you will give me some good questions to answer. I might just write about the events of the day or something I’ve been thinking about. We’ll see!

Do note, that it won’t be highly edited. I’ll edit for spelling (or at least try to), but I won’t be going back and revising a bunch. I’ll try to be cohesive and think through what I’m going to write beforehand, but not with the same diligence of most of my other posts.

Each post will be at least 500 words (thus the title of the challenge) and I will try to keep it close to that as a cap.

If you are interested in checking out this challenge, you can find it here!

Now it’s your turn, what are you planning for this year? For January? For this week? Comment and tell me your best laid plans and hopes for 2019. And if you want, drop me a question to answer for one of my blog posts! Talk to you tomorrow :)