8 days of writing
What #1000wordsofsummer has taught me so far.
As I’m writing this, it’s Day 8 of #1000wordsofsummer and I have written 7,486 words. That is nothing short of a miracle to me. During my two-day mini writing retreat in the spring, I worked on an outline but managed to spit out just 386 words. I have never written this much and this quickly, and before this sprint, I didn’t know if I could. It’s a revelation to realize that I have the capacity to do this, but I’ve also had to learn how to adapt my writing strategies quickly—sometimes, day by day, and other times, during my writing sessions themselves—to hit my daily 1000 word goal.
My routine looks like this…
I wake up around 5:30 am and after playing Wordle, skimming the news, feeding my cats breakfast, and emptying out the dishwasher, I am usually at my dining table around 6:30 to start writing for 45-60 minutes before I have to break for breakfast and a shower to be at my work desk by 8 am. Sometimes, I get out just 100 words; other times, it’s over 500. But I have yet to get through my full 1000 in the morning alone. After dinner, I migrate upstairs to my work desk and bang out my remaining word count with a candle burning and ambient music playing. Throughout the day, and especially in the evening, I’m texting with my two writing accountability friends (Liz and Ash, check them out!) about how it’s going, what we’re learning, little inspirational bits, and our daily word count.
Here’s how my daily experience has been going…
Day 1: It’s a Saturday, so I feel like I have abundant time to get everything written. I take my time and mostly write for this blog, which is easier to write than my fictional work. 1009 words.
Day 2: With the “easy” blogging out of the way for the week, I now have to focus on the tough stuff—my actual story. Picking up on my character description exercise, I work on putting deeper, richer description and narrative around some of my sketched-out scenes. I put in 300 words in the morning, and then surprise myself by churning out 700 words in an hour in the afternoon. 1053 words.
Day 3: I continue to revisit old scenes and flesh them out. I’m not focused on writing perfect, or frankly, even good, language; I’m focused on getting the outline of the story down on paper, first. The polishing can come in the edit phase. 1005 words.
Day 4: 500 words in the morning. I go out to dinner with O to celebrate our one-year wedding anniversary! And then I’m back at it, belly full of pasta, to plod to the finish line at 10pm. 1005 words, again.
Day 5: The last thing I did before going to sleep the night before was write, and it feels difficult to wake up first thing and get back at it. I feel drained and the honeymoon phase is over; this is starting to feel hard. I’m thinking about other stories where a young character arrives in a new environment and am interested in re-reading those scenes from other writers to get a sense of how they do it. (Think: The Golden Compass, Harry Potter, The Poppy War, Ender’s Game.) I spend 45 minutes in the morning getting out only 120 words. In the evening, I stare at my screen for half an hour, feeling sorry for myself, then decide to change up my strategy by working on a writing prompt from Suzanne Robert’s wonderful resource. I shock myself by writing 1200 words in 20 minutes. 1379 words.
Day 6: Can lightning strike twice? Maybe not, but I’ve now learned that to figure out if my story is even a story, I need to GET IT OUT OF MY HEAD AND ONTO THE PAGE. I write to my accountability buds: I think this has been the biggest learning for me so far. I was holding back so much and trying to write the best sentences instead of getting ideas out there. And ideas require MASS to determine if they’re worth it or not. I read the introductory chapter to By Cunning & Craft: Practical Wisdom for Fiction Writers by Peter Selgin and share this passage with them:
Don’t chisel perfect sentences into stone, or try to. That’s no way to write a first draft. Don’t even think that you’re writing; think that you’re dancing, or conducting a symphony, or chasing moonbeams, or soaping windows. Don’t be a slave to grammar or syntax, or even to meaning. Write to the sound of words, not to their logic—not at first. Be guided by rhythms, hues, textures, game theory. Astrological charts, whim. Be bold, be devilish; be outrageous. Forget about readers; tickle yourself. Should doubts, misgivings or disgust arise during this honeymoon, shoo, shoo them away. If they persist, consider the possibility that bride and groom (artist and subject) aren’t truly meant for each other. However you manage it, try, at this juncture, to have at least some fun.
But I’m really tired and don’t know what to write. I make a list of scenes I could work on. O reminds me that I don’t have to do this. But I accept the challenge and forge ahead. 1034 words.
Day 7: I write over 500 words in the morning. I speak to my therapist in the afternoon and talk a lot about my story, which isn’t really a story; it’s scraps of scenes, it’s characters, and I’ll be brutally honest—I don’t feel like it’s building to what I want and I haven’t been able to uncover an arc at all. I think some of my earlier assumptions and decisions will need to change significantly. In short, I write to my accountability thread, I’m at the part of this project that I think my story is stupid and there’s nothing there. So I decide to take a break and write about my cat, through her POV. I’m cackling with pleasure at what I’ve written. I read my writing to O, which I never do, and am crying laughing as I try to spit out the words. There’s something here—joy—that I want to kindle through the rest of this challenge. O and I go out for ice cream and we watch the original 1994 Interview with The Vampire movie with Brad Pitt and Tom Cruise (the TV show is much better, and I suspect the books are better still). 1004 words.
Day 8: I’m writing this to you and I’ve already hit 1000 words for the day. The “easiest” part of the second half of this now done, and I have 6000 words remaining between now and the finish line. I don’t know what I’ll write about, but I remind myself that I get to write, not that I have to write, and this is an enormous privilege that’s supposed to be FUN. 1300 words.
What I’m reading
I’ve dropped everything to read Dawn by Octavia Butler, the first book of her Xenogenesis series. I’m devouring it the way I remember devouring library books in mid-summer. It’s fun and rich but there are many serious topics coursing just beneath the skin of the story—eugenics, colonization, nuclear war—just to name a few. Might finish it this weekend.
A helpful thing
Ursula K. Le Guin was a “serious” writer who also wrote “silly” books like Catwings and blog posts through the eyes of her beloved cat, Pard. If Ursula can do both, so can we all. For the next week, give yourself permission to write whatever the fuck you want.
As I finish writing this, I have now written 8,786 words. Let’s keep going.
