Have you noticed a distinct lack of direction in my musings lately? Part of it is because things have been happening that I can write about. (And by “things” I mean uninteresting weather-related happenings and travels.) I don’t know where my story voice has gone, but I haven’t seen her in a long time.

There are days when I feel that the Goal is causing me to not only write to a lower-quality bar, but to write less. (Don’t think I can’t see you nodding in agreement, Chuck. Don’t hurt yourself reaching over to pat yourself on your back.) I know the 1,000 words goal is out there, and I also know that I need only stretch my fingers just so to arrive at it. Once I take into account the edits (which, in true Marathon fashion, usually end up padding the word count), I end up a few hundred words over the goal. More often than not I call it quits after the edits, even on days where I could probably write more words and maybe even story a bit.

Part of the reason is that writing these diary/consternation entries is so easy for me. I can manage the Goal even without caffeine (although it is much more painful that way—both the writing and the reading, I imagine). I’ve been thinking of splitting the Goal between musing and storying to ensure I at least attempt a small amount of storytelling each day. I’m not convinced yet, however. There are some days where I have nothing but consternations, and it pains me to think about forcing myself to story on those days. And then there are days where I actually have something I want to talk about in these entries. It seems wrong to stop quality musings to story about crap.

I’ll continue on my current course at least for a few more days. As I’ve said before, writing is about chipping at the mountain. As long as I do it every day, I can’t help but get better. Now whether that better will ever translate into writing something good, that’s not something I can know now. But if I never tried…you can insert your cliche (the accented e is causing my RSS feed to cry…I need to convert that character; yet more sewcrates.com fixings) here.