As I prayed this morning, going through my daily devotional, our family basset hound made a crazy amount of noise, pulling out something from behind a shelf. I scrambled to quiet him and to discover what in the world he had gotten himself into again at 4:30 a.m. and then I noticed the treasure he found: my dream notebook.
How is it that a dream notebook can collect dust in a darkened corner and be forgotten? Sometimes, that’s right where we put our dreams.
This past winter I created a dream notebook using COMPEL’s Follow Your Dreams Action Plan. COMPEL is a membership site for writers who want to write words that move people that I discovered through Proverbs 31 Ministries. Listening to a podcast posted through COMPEL, I met Michael Hyatt for the first time and then read a couple of his books: Your Best Year Ever: A 5-Step Plan for Achieving Your Most Important Goals and Platform: Get Noticed in a Noisy World. Through these readings, I set the following goal on April 8, 2018: I will write two hours each day, Monday through Friday, beginning April 9, 2018, every morning, 6:00 a.m. – 7:00 a.m. in academic writing and 2:00 p.m. – 3:00 p.m. in children’s literature writing. I noted a reset on July 4, 2018, and I also know that’s the weekend my dream notebook tumbled into the dark corner.
So, today is a new day. On August 20, 2018 I reset again to choose to write not only in academic writing but also in children’s literature writing. My schedule does have space for me to carve out two hours a day to write, certainly not consecutively, but even fifteen minutes at a time, dreams can be kept out in the open, free from dust, and be developed to become a reality.
I was listening to one of Chrystal Evans Hurst’s podcast and heard an author say she wrote a book in 15 minutes a day. I gasped in response to that Aha moment. I had constantly wrestled with finding time to write. The answer was time-blocking. A method I have used in my job to be productive. WOW! It works for writing too. I set the reset button today of writing a minimum of 500 words daily. You pray for me and I’ll pray for you. May we make our dreams reality.
Congrats on setting the rest button, Calvonia! With each new word written, our dreams come closer to reality. Prayers sent your way, my writing friend!
Looks like your dog was meant to find it so it was teh sign you needed to return to your writing!
Of all the things our dog likes to discover, I’m thankful for this discovery. It was a special moment and helped me restart again. I trust your writing and art are going well, Ryan.