Well, this has been an interesting journey so far.
In a week and a bit I have gone from
- Being super-excited and a little nervous, to
- Awkwardly writing the first short story I’d written in ages, to
- Figuring out how to get into the meat of the story faster, to
- Feeling like I was never going to be able to launch myself into a new story every day, to
- Realizing story ideas were everywhere and that all I needed was one interesting sentence or question or moment in reality for a story to flow from it, to
- Struggling with real life, carving out time to write, to
- Noticing that I am really happy and productive in other areas of my life when I do write, to
- Noticing that I am a bit of a witch if circumstances conspire to keep me from my writing, to
- Coming to terms with the fact that even in a challenge like this, there might have to be the occasional day off, to
- Looking forward to getting back to writing again after a day off.
I have written every day except Mother’s Day on Sunday, when I spent my writing time doing site maintenance and lining up writing prompts for the coming week (Note to self: if I do this again, I’ll get a month’s worth of prompts ready before Day 1. I also wish I had more blog posts in my back pocket, rather than blog ideas. I was waiting to see what people’s challenges were, so I could blog about that, but in reality, where did I think I was going to find the time? Even this post is robbing Peter to pay Paul).
I am really enjoying reading everyone else’s comments both on the Twitter feed and at the site.
I love reading everyone’s comments on other people’s stories and making them myself. It forces me to read things critically and pick up tips for my own writing. I find that difficult to do in a vacuum.
So, in short, I’m loving doing the challenge and I’m loving the community aspect of it. Big thanks to everyone who is turning up and trying.
Note to self, from 2024: you will never, not once, have everything ready to go before Day 1. And that’s ok.