I’ve decided to take on a self-imposed writing challenge. My goal is to write approximately 500 words a day, every day from now until Easter (on April 17th). This is writing 500 words for fifty days straight (inclusive of Easter and today (Transfiguration Sunday).

I’m using my blog as a space for accountability and updates about my writing (along with my other writings and offerings). My goal is to write 25,000 words or the equivalent of two chapters. There will be some editing, some rewriting, and some days where it is really forced, but I will get it done.

The goal is to get into the habit of prioritizing my writing and creative work and to share a little bit of my work with my followers each day as well, making this blog something like a writing journal. My update for Day 1 follows.

Since I didn’t get the Sporting Kansas City soccer match on any of my streaming services today, I decided it was time to work on the book. I cleaned off my dining room table except for a candle I dusted off and a daffodil I picked from the front yard. I sat down to my tablet (a cheap Kindle Fire that has Microsoft Word on it, and put my phone away.

I began writing, and it took the shape of moving into our new house when I was in second grade. It was a double wide trailer where I got my own bedroom. I felt like I had arrived. It’s bizarre what you remember from moving at a young age. I know that I remember the brick masons putting in the underpinning and being mesmerized by their rhythm with the trowel and bricks around the house. I also remember the pile of mixing sand outside my window that accidentally became a reservoir for rain water. I watched the rain come down one Saturday and as it collected from the higher spaces in the yard behind the crescent of sand, my brother and I wondered when it would spill over.

Eventually, it did spill over, but in an unexpected way. Part of the sand gave way and created a canal of water to pour out into a river that then ran down under the outbuilding and into the lower portion of back yard, soaking into the ground to feed the small freshwater stream that started near the old school bus my paw paw put in the in the cow pasture. I actually went to this creek the other day, the early frogs were very loud, a sign of spring.