A common complaint among people who write is that they don’t have the time to pursue their hobby. Unfortunately, I cannot kid myself that I am too busy - I have no dependents or extra responsibilities besides work. My lack of writing is a mix of lack of habit, perfectionism, and some unpindownable psychological issue.
I think about writing the vast majority of days, but I’ve never gotten into the habit of regularly writing. At a guess I make bullet points on a new story every fortnight, start about one story every month or two, then only finish about two short stories a year. Any amount of writing still helps hone the skill, and over the last couple of years I’ve grown more confident in sharing my work (even when I think it’s subpar), so it’s not like it has been a waste of time. I can see promise in some of my unfinished stories, and they’ve helped me understand myself better.
Still, I can’t help but feel frustrated, especially when I can be hardworking in my day job. I work from home and can easily focus on the mundane tasks set for me by other people, but after I finish work I move a couple of metres to the other side of the room and suddenly feel incapable of working on things that are just for me.
A few days ago I had the 1am thought of: how about instead of not writing I instead do all the writing. 100 stories in 100 days. The next obvious thought was: how would this be any different from all the other times I’ve set myself writing goals and failed to get anywhere with them? 100 stories in 100 days is not a smart goal. It’s wildly out of my comfort zone and over an ambitious length of time.
Ok, I don’t entirely have an answer for that, but I’m going to outline the pros and cons of such an idea.
Pros
The pros are somewhat self-explanatory, but I still think eeking out specifics can help me stick to the goal.
Writing for a hundred days would mean actually building a habit. Even if after a hundred days (or however long it lasts) I don’t stick to writing daily I will have at least proved to myself that I am capable, and it will make writing regularly feel easier.
Any writing helps build up the skill.
It would help combat my perfectionism. I can excuse myself from not writing something earth-shattering when I’m only written it in a day. It would help me not to get so attached to ideas that I feel paralysed about putting them to paper because I “won’t do it justice”.
If I did stick to it, I would feel proud of myself, and it would also be a nice thing to look back on in future years, whether or not I persist with writing.
It would be good practice to share things even when they are far from perfect.
Cons
The most obvious downside is failing embarrassingly early on. Like…Day 4. I hope to mitigate that somewhat by doing the usual sensible habit-forming things - having a set time each day to write, doing something short when I’m feeling particularly unenthusiastic etc. Once I get to 5-7 days I will share this substack with people - I think that will help motivate me to persist.
I do feel a bit uncomfortable about putting things out that are mediocre, and inevitably most of the stories I write in a day would be mediocre. One solution would be to write a story a day privately and not share it, but I think that would make it harder for me to stick to.
In theory the frequency could put me off writing, but I think that’s unlikely.
My personal guidelines
Minimum word count is only 100 words, but with the general goal to be 500-3000 words. I’ll inevitably have off days, and setting a low minimum makes my goal much more achievable. I’d be happy if I could do 3000-5000 words stories, but while I can technically write that much in a day I would struggle to also edit and publish it in that time. I’m not used to writing 500-3000 word stories, so it would be interesting to work out what kind of stories I can tell.
Only complete stories, not fragments of one. They have to work as a stand alone piece, although they could be interconnected with other stories. I imagine some will feel a bit fragmented just because of the time limit, but I wouldn’t do it on purpose.
No stories previously started. Admittedly there are a few that I want to get back to, but essentially I want to be creating 100 new stories, not just finishing old ones, or rehashing old ideas.
A story a day, not two stories in one day and zero the next. I’m happy to plan a story the day before, but on the day I want to start, finish, edit and publish. Obviously there’s an exception if I genuinely can’t do it (due to illness, emergency, apocalypse, etc), and then I will try to do another little story later on to make up for it so I can still stick to 100 stories in 100 days.
In conclusion…
I like ridiculous, over-ambitious goals.
Very cool. You have me wanting to try writing one a week maybe, to force me to finish my stories instead of having 80k (last I checked) words of drafts (many of which are on the 3rd or 5th draft) and only 3 finished stories
You absolutely can! This is a fantastic idea that I'd like to do too when I've finished with Year of the Newt!