"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another, 'What! You too? I thought I was the only one.'" ~ C. S. Lewis

Thursday, January 6, 2011

New and Improved! Resolve!

sounds like a cleaner or something ... oh wait, it is.

Um, moving on...

Soooo the most amazing and spifferiffic Lindsey over at Dangerous with a Pen posted that she had made a resolution to write 100 words a day.

And I realized that this was possibly the most brilliant idea I had ever heard.*

because even when you're dead tired and you've taught 32 ungrateful little freshmen** and have literary theory oozing out of your ear and your pretty sure your contacts are now fused to your corneas from staring at the computer screen for so long, you can still write 100 words. Like totes easy. It's what, a paragraph? pshht. Anyone can write a paragraph.

I wanted to do some major work on my NaNo novel over break, but I hadn't written a single word. I started doing this, each night it's easy to say, oh, yeah. Just 100 words before I go to sleep. And I've managed to work out the back stories and background information I was needing to do before I could officially start the re-write. I've written more in the last 3 days than I had in the last 2 weeks! (which isn't really saying much. Because I really didn't write ANYTHING in the last 2 weeks. Which is my point.)

Sometimes the 100 words turns into like 200 or 500 or 1,000 words. But even if it doesn't, at least I've written SOMETHING. Which is kind of the point of this whole writer thing, right?

So we have an official badge and everything and we're going to encourage each other, because 100 words is totally DOABLE.

Feel free to snag our button if you want a little motivation and you're like us with crazy busy lives that too often zombinize your brains and you think it just might be doable too.

Here's to a year of writing 100 words a day, which, if you think about it, would be 36,500 words over the year, even if you never wrote more and that's like half a novel! Just from 100 tiny little words a day! Crazy talk.

*except for all of those other brilliant ideas I've heard that I say that about.
**well, not all 32 of them are ungrateful

7 comments:

Melissa Cunningham said...

Good luck and it's a great goal! I've been working on my nano book too.

Caroline said...

I love it. Instead of posting pictures of Eeyore and moping the way I do, you'll always have something to show for the day and probably something that germinates in your mind overnight to becomes another idea and another and another...

I'm going to try that. Thanks for the inspiration.

Sarah Ahiers said...

it's a great plan! If you stick to it, we're talking almost 40K by the end of the year. That's pretty snazzy

Tracy said...

So how are you doing thus far? Great goals but like i tell my students, goals are just that; how are you going to back them up...what is your plan?
just a thought...but I bet you can do it..love the shirt!

Rebecca T. said...

@Melissa: Thanks! The hardest part of NaNo is picking it up afterwards :)

@Caroline: I misread that for a minute and thought you said that *I* was moping and I was trying to think what I had posted lately, but then I read it right and laughed. I hope you do try it! It's great!

@Sarah: I know! 40K is nothing to sneeze at :)

@Tracy: I've written about 1,000 words of backstory and world building and then 500 words of the re-write, which I started last night, so it's working pretty well :D

Unknown said...

Bring it onnnnn!

SF said...

Hi! I came over from Dangerous with a Pen, and if you don't mind, I'm taking the blog button! 100 words a day sounds manageable..