Lessons one week into a 30-day writing challenge

On January 19th, in an attempt to fix my dysfunctional relationship with writing, I challenged myself to write 300 words every day for 30 days starting on February first. I'm now 7 days into the challenge (well, 10 really since I gave myself a head start and began on January 29th).

Here's what I learned so far.

• It's a lot less scary and challenging as I imagined.
• Integrating writing into a routine helps to get it done.
• I find that writing in the morning works best. I wake up, work out, meditate, and write as the sun comes up. This is the sweet spot.
• I sometimes find it difficult to find topics to write about. To mitigate this, I've also incorporated reading into my daily routine, and a day for research into my weekly routine.
• 300 words per day was probably a high bar. Though I like to push myself to write at least 300 words per day, I doubt this is sustainable long term if my goal is to write every day.
• I spend too much time on minor details, proofreading and trying to write perfect posts. If I'm to continue doing this every day, I should look at my writing more as a stream of consciousness. Some posts will require more research and time, but not the daily stuff. BFC nails it when he talks about his blog being a playground.

Starting tomorrow, I will begin paying more attention to the time spent writing posts. I'd like to get it down to 30 to 45 min per posts on a regular day.

This experiment has caused me to wonder how Fred Wilson has been able to sustain a daily blog since 2003. There are definitely times during the year where I like to fully disconnect for days at a time. Perhaps one needs to stack up on posts before leaving on holidays and schedule them for release. ?