Strange things happen when you make a goal and stick with it. I can’t believe it took me ten years to figure this out!

The Backstory

When I set my New Year’s writing resolution for 2021, I vowed to write every day this year. I would allow myself to “skip” days only in extreme or special circumstances. Seemed simple enough.

Then, well-established crafter of words, Brandon Sanderson, released a video explaining how one could write a book a year just by writing every day. Totally coincidental, but this hit home so hard for me that I had to write about my experience doing just that in January: writing everyday.

January in Review

I’m happy to announce I only missed one day in January (and that’s because we suddenly had to buy a car… long story, totally uninteresting) Other than that day, I buckled down and committed. Every day I wrote.

Truth be told, some days were easier than others, some days were a challenge altogether. Some days it took me literally hours to write two paragraphs.

But I wrote.

Even when I wanted to throw an adult temper tantrum . . . even when I had to take a drink every time I churned out a sentence . . . even when I spent more time delaying the inevitable by cleaning, or making another coffee, or forcing the dog to play (no joke!), I wrote.

The first week was a breeze. I’ve got this, I thought. I’ve done NaNoWriMo for nine years in a row. I’ve got this!

Wanna be my writing buddy? I’m RissaRenae!

The second week was a bit of a slog, but not too difficult. The writing quality took a hit, but still, I wrote.

The third week suck-didily-ucked.

But the fourth week. Eureka! Something clicked. Suddenly writing every day wasn’t like a chore. Suddenly I was cranking out 700-2,500 words a sitting as opposed to my measly 200-400.

So What Happened?

I developed better writing habits.

  • I turned off my phone and my tablet. At times, I disabled the wi-fi on my laptop.
  • I beat the sh*t out of my internal editor and told them to shut the eff up!
  • I didn’t worry about writing “crappy” sentences. I just wrote.
  • I became a willing participant in my ‘write every day’ goal.
Image courtesy Imgflip‘s Meme Generator

I became a willing participant in my ‘write every day’ goal.

  • Throughout the day, I would think about the scene I wanted to write.
  • I stopped procrastinating and distracting myself with other work—cleaning, organizing, etc.
  • I set aside a specific time and dedicated that time to writing for one hour.

I stopped seeing writing as ‘work’ and turned it in to ‘fun.

  • I didn’t stick to one story. I mix-and-matched.
  • I allowed myself to write whatever-the-heck I wanted, even if it would never make it into a novel. (I even dabbled in Romance.  Ooooh, the forbidden genre!)
  • I found music and other inspirations to keep things interesting.
Image courtesy Imgflip‘s Meme Generator

As I’m writing this blog post, I have an ATEEZ dance mix playing on YouTube to keep things peppy and interesting.

What did I accomplish?

For months since pandemic lock down started in Canada, I’ve been in a creative rut. My next novel was supposed to come out at the end of 2019. Now I’m aiming for winter of 2021, a full two year delay! Ugh!

I got stuck in the middle of the novel while getting my characters to a critical turning point in the plot. I had written that plot point already, I had gotten my characters out, I had them suffer the consequences already. But getting them to that point had me throwing adult temper tantrums.

So for January, I was hell-bent on getting over this hump! It’s not like this point in the story was boring, far from it. Something in my brain kept me from writing this transition. So when I sat down to pound keys on Jan-One, I was determined to complete this scene, even if it was complete garbage.

And I did!

As I worked through my road blocks, the ideas started flowing. I hoped in January I could complete 3 chapters in my Fourth Book, and I did that and more. I figured out plot points in my epic fantasy, I reworked issues in a sci-fi/speculative fiction I had been writing. As January came to a close, I had written close to 9,000 words. Sure, that’s no NaNo, but I thoroughly impressed myself!

January writing progress as recorded in my bullet journal.

Plans for the Future?

Now that I know my crux and how to get past it, I think this write-every-day thing is gonna be a breeze.

If I could give one piece of advice that I’ve learned, it is this:

Even if it sucks, just write it. You can’t edit a blank page.

Rissa renae

Until next post!

– Rissa