This Writing Life: Writing Every Day… Or Not

I’ve long been a proponent of writing regularly, of keeping a schedule no matter how busy the rest of your life might be. Maybe that’s writing every weekday, or every weekend; maybe that’s just one night a week, jealously guarded. In any case, having that routine allows you to write reliably and steadily, to set deadlines, and – importantly – to finish things. However, in the past I’ve also accompanied a regular schedule of production with time off, anything from a day or two each week to longer periods, time to think and relax and sort of breathe, away from whatever I’m working on.

This year, though… This year, I decided to try something different.

Starting on the very first of January 2015, I set myself the goal of writing 1000 words a day, every single day of the year. For someone who was also running a new business, keeping animals and attempting to have just a little bit of a life, it was an extraordinary target – but, for the most part, I’ve succeeded. Between the start of the year and the middle of October, I wrote every single day bar one, and whilst on many occasions I didn’t reach that 1k, my overall word count ultimately averaged out at my goal.

It has, without a doubt, been incredibly hard, but also incredibly rewarding. Producing so many words over the course of 10 months or so has been not only a boost to the number of books I’ve been able to self-publish, but also very exhilarating. There’s nothing quite like writing, and writing at speed, to make me feel endlessly satisfied; that abundant productivity and creativity is thrilling like nothing else (well, without leaving the comfort of your desk, anyway!).

You might have noticed, though, I mentioned ‘the middle of October’ above. That’s because, in the last week, I’ve made the decision to drop my daily target altogether – in fact, for the last couple of days, I haven’t written anything at all. (Funnily enough, what I expected to be a liberating decision is one I’ve barely noticed, simply because I’ve been busy with other things; and, perhaps, because writing is never far from my mind, even when my fingers aren’t on the keyboard). So, what happened?

Well, for a start, that daily writing schedule, and particularly pushing for 1000 words each time, was frequently disruptive to everything else in my creative life. For months, I’ve ignored social media, this blog, promoting my books, and all sorts of other miscellanea. For a long time, that didn’t particularly bother me, as I felt it was a sacrifice worth making, and I might have gone on almost indefinitely; in the end, it was two other factors that forced my hand.

One was, quite literally, my hand. I’ve suffered from RSI in my right hand, wrist and arm for years, and whilst the general routine of writing every day didn’t seem to exacerbate it, recent stints of concentrated editing seem to have been particularly damaging. Secondly, that editing was a problem: trying to edit multiple books, alongside writing 1000 words a day, has been more of a challenge than anything else I’ve attempted this year. In the end, I knew I needed to edit in order to meet my publishing deadlines, but that meant I frequently fell behind with my word counts, and knowing I wasn’t able to claw my way back to my goal was more disheartening than helpful.

So, I’ve dropped the schedule, but I’d still say it’s been worth it, as an experiment if nothing else. I think I really just wanted to prove to myself that I could do something like this – and I have. Whilst I would, in a perfect world, have kept up my goals until the end of the year, I still feel an amazing sense of accomplishment over how much I did achieve, and I’ve been pleased to find just how much writing time I can tease out of a day, every day, even when I feel otherwise overwhelmed.

As I said, then, an experiment, and a successful one, even if ended a little early. In future, I’ll still aim to write far more days than not, and to keep up a schedule whenever possible – but also, for my health and my sanity, I’ll remember to take days off now and again, that editing is just as important as writing, and that, when I want to, I can accomplish anything I set my mind to.

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