My 750 word habit is rock solid. So I’ve decided to push it in several ways. Before I did this by getting various badges - one for not being distracted, the other for speed of writing. I feel doing this is a way to stretch the habit in it’s grooves, to go through the pain period of not just letting it lie, but by doing more.

I feel my first real challenge has been these last 4 days of National Novel Writing Month, where participants are invited to write a novel (50,000 words) in one month - the idea is to just write freely, not to have something that’s perfect.

I think this is fantastic - it’s even supported on 750words as a badge on the site. But this is a sizable problem for me because it’s almost triple my word count per day for 30 days.

This has caused a number of small problems. For one, it’s harder to get started on this at the beginning of the day - I end up putting it off - a problem I only had at the beginning of forming the habit originally. The second is that it has been throwing off my kettle bell workout routine - because I delay at my writing I delay, sometimes ignore completely my other habit. Thirdly my mood has been pretty irritable - I’ve been subject to more bouts of sadness and anger. Lastly, I’m starting to get a bit shoddy when it comes to tracking my progress.

This is all minor - and luckily it all seems to fit with my theories on habit formation. I’m entering that quarter of the way mark on the exercise habit and when I look at my spreadsheets now it looks like my spreadsheets for 750 words during the quarter of the way mark.

I’m countering this by being more strict about writing as soon as I get up. IN fact that may be a great technique for any habit that is shaky - doing it as soon as you get up. I’ve been countering my moods by going on walks, which tends to get my blood flowing - it’s been such a great way of loosening up that I’m thinking about making that a separate habit.