On Wednesday I wrote a thousand words. Slightly more, but the goal was a thousand.
I did the same the day before. And the day before that. In fact, Wednesday concluded the twelfth week in a row--the eighty-fourth consecutive day--in which I had written at least one thousand words.
I set myself a goal on April Fools Day, of all days. In retrospect it was kind of a lousy day to set a goal, not least because it was tricky to tell people about it. No one takes any declaration seriously on April Fools Day. But I set the goal, all the same.
My original goal was to write one thousand words every day for one hundred days. (I didn't actually get to 100 days, and I'm okay with that--more on that in a bit.) I set no constraint on what the words needed to be about, just that only words written in a specific document counted, a document created just for this goal. Subsequent days could continue a tale started previously, or not. The topic could be anything, the genre as well.
My purpose was just to get some practice writing. I originally had a few themes and ideas I wanted to explore, and my first couple of weeks were dominated by short stories drawn from those ideas and themes, but as the project wore on I started casting about for different sources of inspiration. At first I worked hard to give each thousand-words a comfortable ending, but later found myself often stopping as soon as the thousand-word mark was reached. It was all valid. The goal was not to tell a complete story, after all.
I was more than halfway through when I realized that I would not be able to reach my goal of 100 consecutive days. Starting on the 97th day, I would be rafting with my son and his youth group for a few days in Moab, away from my computer, and there was no practical way I could write a thousand words by hand, by firelight, on a scrap of paper held on my lap each evening.
I was surprised by how devastated I felt. I wanted to just stop there, to give up, but I knew I couldn't. I wasn't done yet. I hadn't yet gotten what I needed from the process. So I gritted my teeth and kept writing. Sixty days. Seventy.
I realized this week that I was concluding my twelfth week, and the number felt right. Three months. Eighty four consecutive days. More than that, I realized that sometime in the last week or two, I had found what I was looking for. I'd shown myself that I could write a thousand words about almost anything, and sometimes even make it compelling! What I wanted next, I found, was to be able to spend more time polishing those words, which was outside the scope of my initial purpose.
So, I gave myself permission to stop early. Or rather, to redefine success. And I did succeed: over the course of 84 days, I wrote more than 88,000 words. Sure, it's no Wheel of Time, but it suffices!
So, my next challenge (after this rafting trip!) will be an evolution of this one, perhaps to spend a half hour or more each day plotting and drafting and editing, giving me space to practice more aspects of writing. It'll be another hundred-day challenge, whatever it is, not because there's anything magical about the number "100", but because it's long enough to really stretch me.
I'm looking forward to it!
I did the same the day before. And the day before that. In fact, Wednesday concluded the twelfth week in a row--the eighty-fourth consecutive day--in which I had written at least one thousand words.
I set myself a goal on April Fools Day, of all days. In retrospect it was kind of a lousy day to set a goal, not least because it was tricky to tell people about it. No one takes any declaration seriously on April Fools Day. But I set the goal, all the same.
My original goal was to write one thousand words every day for one hundred days. (I didn't actually get to 100 days, and I'm okay with that--more on that in a bit.) I set no constraint on what the words needed to be about, just that only words written in a specific document counted, a document created just for this goal. Subsequent days could continue a tale started previously, or not. The topic could be anything, the genre as well.
My purpose was just to get some practice writing. I originally had a few themes and ideas I wanted to explore, and my first couple of weeks were dominated by short stories drawn from those ideas and themes, but as the project wore on I started casting about for different sources of inspiration. At first I worked hard to give each thousand-words a comfortable ending, but later found myself often stopping as soon as the thousand-word mark was reached. It was all valid. The goal was not to tell a complete story, after all.
I was more than halfway through when I realized that I would not be able to reach my goal of 100 consecutive days. Starting on the 97th day, I would be rafting with my son and his youth group for a few days in Moab, away from my computer, and there was no practical way I could write a thousand words by hand, by firelight, on a scrap of paper held on my lap each evening.
I was surprised by how devastated I felt. I wanted to just stop there, to give up, but I knew I couldn't. I wasn't done yet. I hadn't yet gotten what I needed from the process. So I gritted my teeth and kept writing. Sixty days. Seventy.
I realized this week that I was concluding my twelfth week, and the number felt right. Three months. Eighty four consecutive days. More than that, I realized that sometime in the last week or two, I had found what I was looking for. I'd shown myself that I could write a thousand words about almost anything, and sometimes even make it compelling! What I wanted next, I found, was to be able to spend more time polishing those words, which was outside the scope of my initial purpose.
So, I gave myself permission to stop early. Or rather, to redefine success. And I did succeed: over the course of 84 days, I wrote more than 88,000 words. Sure, it's no Wheel of Time, but it suffices!
So, my next challenge (after this rafting trip!) will be an evolution of this one, perhaps to spend a half hour or more each day plotting and drafting and editing, giving me space to practice more aspects of writing. It'll be another hundred-day challenge, whatever it is, not because there's anything magical about the number "100", but because it's long enough to really stretch me.
I'm looking forward to it!