(I wrote this yesterday and was ready to post it, but before I could, this happened. Therefore, this is actually my 101st post, not my one hundredth. I've decided to just play pretend though. So play along, okay?)This is my one hundredth post since I started writing at ChicagoNow about six months ago. Since I’m a numbers guy the one hundredth post has a special significance to me. At first I thought that I might try to do some epic, entertaining, witty, important post for number one hundred, but if there’s anything I’ve learned about the way I write at ChicagoNow—and in my other writing—it’s that quite often epicness (yes that’s a word) and planning don’t coincide. Want an e-mail every time I write something new? Type your email address in the box and click the "create subscription" button. I'm not going to send you a bunch of junk, and you can ditch me any time you want.
When I look at the first ninety-nine posts on Dry it in the Water, I see some that are funny, some that are smart, some that seem forced, and some that just come up a little bit short. (And yes, you’re correct, I’m not linking to the not-so-great posts. Do you think I’m an idiot?)Even though I wish every post were golden, I still appreciate those that aren’t because at least they’re there. Before I started writing them, those posts didn’t exist. Then I wrote them, and now they exist.And there’s something to be said for that.Stephen King wrote a great book called On Writing. The second half of the book talks about his writing process and offers some helpful tips for anyone who wants to write. And even though it’s been thirteen years since I read it, I still remember his number one tip (besides reading a lot): write.Just do the work.He writes 2,000 words every day, which probably sounds like a lot. And if you’re a writer who’s having a bad day (there are good days and bad days in writing just like everything else), it can seem nearly impossible to produce 2,000 words in a day.But the 2,000 words isn’t the important part of his advice. It’s the every day part that really matters.His first book, Carrie, has just under 60,000 words. Since I’m a math whiz I’ll tell you that those numbers work out to just under thirty days of writing.Thirty days! A month and then a novel was born. It didn’t exist before, he wrote for a month, and now it does exist.I didn’t get to one hundred blog posts all at once. And while I do try to write something every day, I don’t write my blog every day. But by keeping to a regular schedule, and focusing on the next post, some months passed and I have one hundred posts.So it turns out that just doing the work works.And it doesn’t just work for writing. It works for everything else as well.I’m no historian, but I’m pretty sure that no one in the history of the world has ever achieved anything by inaction. Nor has any great accomplishment been completed all at once. Everything happens a little bit at a time. All that’s required is persistence.This might be particularly useful to remember around this time of year as people struggle to continue whatever New Year’s resolution they’ve set for themselves.If you want to lose a few pounds, don’t forget that you have to cut 3,500 calories to equal a pound. So if you want to lose thirty pounds you’ve got to cut 105,000 calories. You can’t do that in a day. But you can cut 600 calories in a day, which might not seem like much. However, after about six months your thirty pounds will be gone!Want to read more? Fifteen minutes doesn’t seem like much, but if you read fifteen minutes every day you’ll have read enough to have finished Carrie twenty-seven times by the end of the year!How about running? Maybe you can’t run ten miles right now, but you can run a hundred feet, I bet. So do it. Then tomorrow run a hundred feet, walk a hundred feet, and run a hundred feet. Build off of that. Slow and steady wins the race. Chip away a little bit at a time and you’ll eventually get to your goal.There’s so much to be said for just showing up and doing the work, that we don’t celebrate it enough. Instead we celebrate the people who achieve great things. It’s easy to forget that before anyone achieved anything great, they showed up and did the work.Just do the work.PREVIOUS POST: We Are Calling to Inform You That All of Our Schools are On LockdownIF YOU LIKED THIS POST I BET YOU'LL ALSO LIKE: What I Believe, Crash Davis Style+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++Hey, how 'bout you Share this post on Facebook and Like my page Brett Baker Writes.