Write Now.

Looking to improve your copywriting credentials? Great. Me too.

And that’s exactly why I have to keep writing. Everyday, in every way I can.

Because when I stop writing, that’s when the trouble starts. In every way it can.

If I stop writing, the first thing that goes wrong is my capacity to pay the mortgage. Because when you’re a professional writer, you rely on these little black scribbles to pay for your safe financial passage through life.

Next on the list is my mental health (I wonder whether I should have put that top of the list…?). Writing is how I express my everything. Sometimes it’s writing just for me, in my daily journal, and sometimes it’s writing for my others, in a card or a letter for a friend. And still other times, it’s writing for fellow writers, freelancers and business people, like with these blog posts or my newsletters.

But whichever form it may be each day, each little jotting helps to connect me, myself and I (and the outside world too). And that is golden time for my emotional wellbeing and for my ability to comprehend everything, from the minutiae of my day, to the bigger-picture issues I may be facing.

People sometimes ask whether it’s difficult to start a writing habit - whether for pleasure or gain - and I can only say that in my experience, it’s simply a matter of achieving the 1% forward motion. A bit like how if you only make a commitment to taking one glass out of the dishwasher, more often than not, you end up emptying it entirely without a struggle. But making the commitment to unstack the whole thing rarely seems like anything other than a gigantic chore - so you end up avoiding it entirely.

I rarely sit down at my computer with an intention to write a thousand words. If I tried to do that then I’d doubtless find myself sitting paralysed by a fear of underperformance and unable to even scratch the surface. But, sitting down with the commitment to reading one thing that someone else has written and writing one single sentence in service of myself? Now that’s something I know I can achieve. And, so often, hey guess what, I’ve smashed out a hundred words and I’m feeling like a total winner.

So, whatever the weather, whatever the time, there’s rarely a bad moment to jot down a something in the service of writing and whether it’s one word or one thousand, you’ll soon be reaping the rewards of being present and write here (see what I did there?!).

Happy Tuesdays.