The Finish Line (Slice 31 of 31)

This post is a part of the Slice of Life challenge which is hosted on the Two Writing Teachers blog.  The month of March the challenge is to write a blog post a day.


We made it!  I did it!  I have crossed the finish line and I feel the euphoria pumping as I do when I am running.  Now, it is time to pig out a little and reflect on my performance.  In running, the training begins again soon after one race stops.  In writing, I will continue to develop the habit of regular writing.

The training involved in this race was quite rigorous.  I did not write every day before we started and I was not sure I would be able to keep it up.  There were some days when the blog post was underwhelming, but I pushed through and made it to the end.  Just as in exercise, sometimes you just have to force yourself to do it and you usually feel better after you finish.

I am proud of the way I made writing a daily habit this month.  I will continue to make writing a more regular part of my schedule because I saw how I started to have more ideas the more I wrote.  It really makes me think about how to structure writing workshop for my students.  I have struggled this year with the need to teach certain things and the culture at my school of assigning prompts.  I want to be able to have students do a true workshop but they have never done this before and they are stopped by their own doubts.  Many of them do not believe they have anything to write about, even though I work hard to help them come up with lists of topics and try to provide examples.  This daily writing really helped me to come up with a lot of topics to write about and also helped me understand that some pieces are worth going back to and some are just first drafts.  It is in regular training that a runner sees improvement and it is in daily writing that a writer will begin to see improvement.

Now that I have crossed this finish line, I can celebrate the accomplishment of writing daily.  I will spend some time celebrating and then get back to the training!  It is through the habit of writing that I will continue to improve.  It is time to keep those fingers tapping the keyboard just as I keep feet pounding on the pavement.  Through the habit of writing daily, I will be able to increase stamina and accomplish my goals.  Now, to start running again (but that's another post).

Congratulations to everyone who completed the Slice of Life Challenge!  Woo-hoo!