William Stafford’s Daily Writing: The Date
I want to start…by considering what my father’s daily writing pages contained, and how they worked for him — and how something like his approach might work for any of us who choose to give such daily writing practice a try.
Each page begins with a date.
“Once I write the date on a piece of paper,” he said once, “I know I’m okay. I have made it to my writing.”
This is the “open sesame” move of the daily writing practice, for by jotting the date down on a page, you have accomplished the most difficult first step:
you have shown up, staked your claim to a page, and you have begun.
–Kim Stafford in “Writing as Ritual“