Justine Manzano 
When I was a kid, I had the wonderfully gross habit of chewing things. I was like a little rat. I chewed on pencils and pens until they would splinter. I would chew on bizarre things. I wouldn’t find out until way later that it was actually sensory seeking behavior—the product of a Sensory Processing Disorder I had, and have since inadvertently passed to my son (that’s the only way it even got diagnosed).
It’s a strange thing. I broke that chewing habit somehow long before I ever thought of having Logan, and yet somehow, he picked up the same habit. We’re struggling to break him from it now.
Habits, as it turns out, are strange and unpredictable things. Some are in our blood, our DNA, like my weird chewing habit. Some form accidentally, like the way you go to the store across the street for lunch, once, twice, and before you know it, we’re regulars. Some habits, the best habits, are the ones we form on purpose.
They say it takes twenty-one days for a habit to form. That kind of habit is a different brand. It starts with a commitment. You decide you’re going to create a habit and then you do it. That’s the intention of programs like NaNoWriMo. You write as much as you can for as many days in a row, and eventually you form a habit.
I used to have a fairly consistent writing habit. I wrote once a day, at least something. Lately, I have allowed that to drop. Life has been perpetually getting in the way of things, our editing business is keeping me in editing jobs (no complaints there), and I just haven’t been carving out the time to write.
That is about to change. For months, I’ve been agonizing about how to get myself started again. I have a few projects in mind, but none of them are jumping out more to me than the others. They all have their benefits, but I need to find which one is my next big project.
Last week, I received my second Scribbler box and it had a journal in it. It contained 300 Writing Prompts. It isn’t the first one I’ve had. The last time I used one it helped me get a handle on character. So, I’ve decided to restart my writing habit. As of this month, I will be writing at least a prompt a day. Each will be written in the voice of one of the characters I’ve been playing with. If I like them, I will post them here. If I don’t, it was worth the attempt.
And by the end of March, I hope to have figured out which voice I want to explore the most. Wish me luck, you guys. By April and Camp NaNoWriMo, I’m hoping to be back in the writing habit.