Taking the Scenic Route

 Last month, I decided to try something new with my writing. At the end of January, I got an e-newsletter from The Writer magazine with the subject line, "Wanna Write Every Day in February?"

Why yes, yes I did.

The idea in quesion was a word-a-day calendar of sorts, providing a different word as a writing prompt each day in February. It was a definite departure for me. Aside from our warm-up in my monthly critique group, prompts and exercises are not my usual writing go-to. I lean more toward making progress. Getting things accomplished. Adding pages to a work-in-progress.

Nevertheless, I dug in.

Looking back, I'm glad I did. It took me a while to set aside the need to produce something "relevant" (that is, related to an actual project, rather than simply writing for the sake of writing). But I made the commitment, and sealed it by selecting a special notebook dedicated to this particular experiment (if you know my love of all things stationery, you know that's serious). Most days, I could pull something personal or character-related out of the prompt and some days, I even created something I was excited about. 

Last week, when I sat down with my notebook to see what I had created, I was pleasantly surprised. Not only had I come close to filling the notebook but my seemingly random work had generated character development, backstory and potential scenes for my work-in-progress, as well as some journaling and brainstorming. I spent about 30 minutes tabbing my pages so I could go back and mine the content and one of the orange tabs (see photo above) was the starter for this blog post.

It was fun taking a bit of a detour -- trying the scenic route, as it were -- for a month. My experiment not only led me down interesting paths, but also helped me to relax a little, something that's essential to creativity. Moving forward, I want to continue with something similar, just not every day. A writer's schedule has to have at least a little bit of productivity, after all. 

It can be hard to break away from the tried-and-true, and even harder to stick to the winding path even after we've committed to it. But when we stop insisting that there's only one right way to do things, we just might find that the scenic route is not only prettier and more fulfilling, but useful as well.

I wonder where my writing journeys will take me this month.