![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
auroracloudWelcome to Write Every Day! This month we're here in my journal.
As always in the beginning of the month, here's a brief introduction for anyone who doesn't know what this is about. Write Every Day is a challenge that has been going on for several years already, hosted in different people's journals each month, as a way to encourage each other to write regularly and thus hopefully get more of the writing done that we want to do. Participating is entirely voluntary, and you can join or drop out any time!
How it works
The basic format is that each day the host (currently I) makes a post where others can check in to say that they've written that day. There's a tally of who has checked in which day. There's no minimum goal - even if you only wrote a sentence, that's writing. There's no shame or punishment if you don't actually write every day - it's just what many of us strive for, because we find that writing regularly makes it easier to keep writing. But you're welcome to check in as often or as rarely as you in fact do write, even if it's just on weekends or only on the second week of the month or a few days every now and then. Whatever works for you! There's no formal sign-up, just start reporting on the posts whenever you do write. If you start and then drop off, we don't mind - life happens, in various ways, and writing can be hard. And you're always welcome to join us again later.
I've been participating in this challenge for years now, and I'm really happy with it. Daily writing without requirement works really well for me, because it makes it easier to just write. Often I set out to write just the one sentence or a few sentences, and end up writing several paragraphs. By keeping the minimum goal ridiculously small, it's achievable even in exhaustion, stress, and days of seemingly no inspiration, and that helps keep me from being discouraged. I've hosted the challenge a few times, and I quite like it, it's nice to interact extra much with people about writing for a month, I often get to know some new people. And right now I'm hoping it'll distract me from my anxiety about the current situation, and make me feel more connected and less lonely in this time of isolation.
If the challenge sounds like something you want to try, just comment on the check-in posts when you've written. You don't have to share what or how much you write, though some people like to do that. I'll do my best to provide cheerleading and encouragement, or sympathy when writing is being difficult, or when life makes it difficult.
I'll tag these entries with the "write every day" tag, so if you want, you can subscribe to that tag to follow these posts - or mute it to avoid them, just as well; at least I've heard you can do that though I haven't yet had the need to learn how. You can also subscribe to me. I don't mind if you subscribe for the month and unsubscribe at the end of it. On the other hand, if you want to stick around after April is over, that's fine, too.
Practical notes: I live in Finland, and posts will probably usually go up some time in the evening my time, depending on how the day's schedule goes. For Americans that tends to mean afternoon-ish, but for people from Australia, New Zealand etc. it may be on the next day. If you need to check in for a different day than the day of the post, just let me know which day(s) you're checking in for. And if you miss a check-in or a few, but you did write, you're always welcome to check in for the days you missed. I'll edit the tally to include you, it's not a big problem. Also, I may make mistakes and accidentally miss you on the tally even if you did check in, so if that happens, just let me know and I'll fix it.
Another practical note: these posts crosspost to LJ, so you can check in there as well, though I must say I'm a lot quicker at replying to comments on Dreamwidth, and the discussion is much more active over here.
Note to people not interested in this challenge who are following my journal: it will understandably dominate my posts a bit for this month, as there's a new check-in post every day, but I'll try to keep the main body of the post pretty short, unless I have some writing-related topic to discuss or question to ask the participants. When the daily tally grows longer, I'll put most of it under a cut.
Voluntary point of discussion to kick us off: Do you have particular writing goals, plans or hopes for this month? Or do you otherwise want to share where you're at in your writing? Most of us all around the world are living in unusual times - is that affecting your writing?
I do aim to keep these posts coronavirus-free in the sense that we're not going to be discussing the news, the virus, etc. But for many of us the current situation does affect our lives enough that it may also affect our writing, so either the posts or the comments may mention that.
In my case, I am well and so are my family and friends as far as I know, but my country is in partial lockdown to help contain the situation. I'm therefore mostly home, and I haven't seen other people much in the past three weeks. The isolation and the anxiety about news have been a bit bad for my creativity; though I often escape bad things into writing, I've found that harder to do than usual. However, I've kept writing throughout March and I intend to keep writing during April. So that's my main goal: keep writing. Anything extra is a bonus.
I am hoping, though, that I'll start getting somewhere with the novel I'm currently working on. I already was working on it last year, but I needed to take some time off to figure out how I'm actually writing it, structure etc., and I'm only gradually returning to the writing. I'd love to get a significant amount forward during April, but at the moment I don't want to set myself a specific goal so I won't get stressed about it.
I've also got some fanfics in progress and would love to get some of them finished and posted. Especially, I've picked up a lot of new fandoms during the past year - mostly podcasts and books, all small Yuletide-sized fandoms - and would love to publish some fic in more of them.
Today's Writing
It took me until pretty late to get to the writing, due to being busy and also tired (I slept badly last night). That's why this post is also coming in later than I planned. But eventually I did manage to start a new scene in my novel and write several paragraphs in it, so it's a victory!
How about you all, how's your writing gone?
As always in the beginning of the month, here's a brief introduction for anyone who doesn't know what this is about. Write Every Day is a challenge that has been going on for several years already, hosted in different people's journals each month, as a way to encourage each other to write regularly and thus hopefully get more of the writing done that we want to do. Participating is entirely voluntary, and you can join or drop out any time!
How it works
The basic format is that each day the host (currently I) makes a post where others can check in to say that they've written that day. There's a tally of who has checked in which day. There's no minimum goal - even if you only wrote a sentence, that's writing. There's no shame or punishment if you don't actually write every day - it's just what many of us strive for, because we find that writing regularly makes it easier to keep writing. But you're welcome to check in as often or as rarely as you in fact do write, even if it's just on weekends or only on the second week of the month or a few days every now and then. Whatever works for you! There's no formal sign-up, just start reporting on the posts whenever you do write. If you start and then drop off, we don't mind - life happens, in various ways, and writing can be hard. And you're always welcome to join us again later.
I've been participating in this challenge for years now, and I'm really happy with it. Daily writing without requirement works really well for me, because it makes it easier to just write. Often I set out to write just the one sentence or a few sentences, and end up writing several paragraphs. By keeping the minimum goal ridiculously small, it's achievable even in exhaustion, stress, and days of seemingly no inspiration, and that helps keep me from being discouraged. I've hosted the challenge a few times, and I quite like it, it's nice to interact extra much with people about writing for a month, I often get to know some new people. And right now I'm hoping it'll distract me from my anxiety about the current situation, and make me feel more connected and less lonely in this time of isolation.
If the challenge sounds like something you want to try, just comment on the check-in posts when you've written. You don't have to share what or how much you write, though some people like to do that. I'll do my best to provide cheerleading and encouragement, or sympathy when writing is being difficult, or when life makes it difficult.
I'll tag these entries with the "write every day" tag, so if you want, you can subscribe to that tag to follow these posts - or mute it to avoid them, just as well; at least I've heard you can do that though I haven't yet had the need to learn how. You can also subscribe to me. I don't mind if you subscribe for the month and unsubscribe at the end of it. On the other hand, if you want to stick around after April is over, that's fine, too.
Practical notes: I live in Finland, and posts will probably usually go up some time in the evening my time, depending on how the day's schedule goes. For Americans that tends to mean afternoon-ish, but for people from Australia, New Zealand etc. it may be on the next day. If you need to check in for a different day than the day of the post, just let me know which day(s) you're checking in for. And if you miss a check-in or a few, but you did write, you're always welcome to check in for the days you missed. I'll edit the tally to include you, it's not a big problem. Also, I may make mistakes and accidentally miss you on the tally even if you did check in, so if that happens, just let me know and I'll fix it.
Another practical note: these posts crosspost to LJ, so you can check in there as well, though I must say I'm a lot quicker at replying to comments on Dreamwidth, and the discussion is much more active over here.
Note to people not interested in this challenge who are following my journal: it will understandably dominate my posts a bit for this month, as there's a new check-in post every day, but I'll try to keep the main body of the post pretty short, unless I have some writing-related topic to discuss or question to ask the participants. When the daily tally grows longer, I'll put most of it under a cut.
Voluntary point of discussion to kick us off: Do you have particular writing goals, plans or hopes for this month? Or do you otherwise want to share where you're at in your writing? Most of us all around the world are living in unusual times - is that affecting your writing?
I do aim to keep these posts coronavirus-free in the sense that we're not going to be discussing the news, the virus, etc. But for many of us the current situation does affect our lives enough that it may also affect our writing, so either the posts or the comments may mention that.
In my case, I am well and so are my family and friends as far as I know, but my country is in partial lockdown to help contain the situation. I'm therefore mostly home, and I haven't seen other people much in the past three weeks. The isolation and the anxiety about news have been a bit bad for my creativity; though I often escape bad things into writing, I've found that harder to do than usual. However, I've kept writing throughout March and I intend to keep writing during April. So that's my main goal: keep writing. Anything extra is a bonus.
I am hoping, though, that I'll start getting somewhere with the novel I'm currently working on. I already was working on it last year, but I needed to take some time off to figure out how I'm actually writing it, structure etc., and I'm only gradually returning to the writing. I'd love to get a significant amount forward during April, but at the moment I don't want to set myself a specific goal so I won't get stressed about it.
I've also got some fanfics in progress and would love to get some of them finished and posted. Especially, I've picked up a lot of new fandoms during the past year - mostly podcasts and books, all small Yuletide-sized fandoms - and would love to publish some fic in more of them.
Today's Writing
It took me until pretty late to get to the writing, due to being busy and also tired (I slept badly last night). That's why this post is also coming in later than I planned. But eventually I did manage to start a new scene in my novel and write several paragraphs in it, so it's a victory!
How about you all, how's your writing gone?
no subject
Date: 2020-04-01 08:53 pm (UTC)Today's wordcount: about 400 words. Total wordcount on the fic: 1250 words.
Good luck with your writing, too! : )
no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 05:46 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 06:17 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 07:57 pm (UTC)*downloads* Oops, there we go.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-01 09:02 pm (UTC)Edit: Also I have written some of it today. :) A couple paragraphs thus far, spurred in part by seeing this post and realising that I had intended to do it but hadn't yet done so!
no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 05:55 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-01 09:17 pm (UTC)I did really well with writing through the first couple of months, but stress and anxiety are proving distracting now. I'm restless and finding it difficult to start writing and then keep my focus, which is a problem because I use writing to escape from stress.
My aim this month is to write 21k, so that's 700 words a day - that's about what I'll need every month to reach 300k by the end of the year.
So, April 1st - 874 words on a new challenge fic. I'll have to finish that one tomorrow, but it's a good start.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 06:10 pm (UTC)I hear you on stress and anxiety making it harder to write. :-( Hope things calm down for us all and we can use writing to feel better again.
You have quite impressive word count goals! I gave up on specific goals for this year completely so they don't stress me out, ha. Well, it's also partly because writing in two different language (English for fanfic, Finnish for original stuff, and they have really different structures) makes it harder to set meaningful word count goals. But I also understand the desire to set goals because they can help motivate you to write. Good luck with your writing! And yay for getting that far along with the challenge fic already. :-)
no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 08:54 pm (UTC)I pledged at getyourwordsout for the fourth year in a row, but I kept it low (200k) so I wouldn't get stressed by the daily word count goal, even though I'm actually aiming for 300k. I usually write quite a lot in the first 2 months of the year when it's too cold and gets dark too early to do much else, so I got a good head start before everything went weird.
I have so much admiration for anyone who can write in more than one language. I'm useless at languages myself. I can understand how it might make word count goals difficult though.
I only write short fics for challenges anyway, so that one's finished and posted now. Writing for weekly and monthly challenges keeps me motivated and makes sure I always have something waiting to be written.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-01 09:37 pm (UTC)My goal for April is twofold - first, to get back into regularly writing more than alibi sentences (which I managed a good stretch of in March before I fell off the wagon again), and second, finish something - anything. Just finish. (I managed two small things in March, which was incredibly motivating.)
I have 1,039 words for today.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 06:14 pm (UTC)Sounds like you already got well started on the more than alibi sentences part!
no subject
Date: 2020-04-01 11:11 pm (UTC)My goal this month is the same as yours: keep writing. I'm hoping to make progress towards finishing the unfinished stuff.
Day 1: 54 words
no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 06:15 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-01 11:28 pm (UTC)I haven't been writing consistently the last couple of weeks because of RL stuff (adjusting to lockdown; partner working from home; partner having surgery), and things are still up in the air, but my goal is to get back on the wagon, get back to my WIP, which I've committed to finishing, and to write a few short and fluffy things as well. Oh, and I'll have an exchange assignment soon, so that too. :-)
I don't think I wrote on the 1st, but I did on the 2nd.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 07:55 pm (UTC)I'll put you down for the 2nd!
no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 08:01 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 12:28 am (UTC)My goal for April is to finish this damned Bond/Q story that's now 24K+ words and nowhere near an ending. To that end, I added 720 words to it tonight (Day 1).
I was having trouble focusing on writing when the schools first started closing, and then I was so overwhelmed with work that I didn't have time or energy to write more than a bit, though I did keep writing every day. Now, though, I have a better handle on things, and I'm having more time and energy again, so I'm hoping that I can find an ending for this story sooner rather than later. ;-)
ETA: I should have said this first: THANK YOU for hosting us this month. I'm so glad to be here. :-)
no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 08:00 pm (UTC)I'm glad you're finding things easier to handle now and have more time and energy, that's great! Hopefully the more we adjust to the current situation, the easier it'll get.
You're welcome, and I'm glad to have you around for another month! I like hosting and I figured it was about time I did so again, and this is a good time for such a thing for me!
no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 02:00 am (UTC)This month's goals: to successfully complete and publish my assignment for
April 1 check-in: I spent my morning writing time on reveals-housekeeping for the exchange that I just finished, but I found time to write a longhand page (fresh new notebook!) during my lunch hour, so that's good. :-)
no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 08:07 pm (UTC)Good luck with your exchange commitments! I'm especially curious about the
Yay for finding writing time in your lunch hour even if morning was spent on other activities. Also, double yay for longhand writing and new notebooks! I love writing longhand, and notebooks. ♥
no subject
Date: 2020-04-03 01:30 am (UTC)There weren't a lot of reminders for unsent-letters, no! And it felt like the nomination period flew by -- I got my noms in during the last hour noms were open. (And then during sign-ups regretted all my nomination choices, but such is the way of it...)
no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 02:24 am (UTC)As the world got darker and, bonus, the universe decided to throw some health stuff at me, I did not manage to keep writing all through March so my goal for April is to try and find the writing mindset for at least a few minutes every day.
However, to start off, I'm re-typing some stuff. I mostly write longhand, which is very good because I had to reinstall both the operating systems on my laptop late last week and I accidentally failed to back up my writing files. (I keep repeating this, but remember to hit "replace all", not "skip all" when some of the files you're backing up have previous backups.) So I have both writing and novel-related notes to type up, everything since February 2.
For today's count, I sat down for a little under two hours tonight, typed up 1,155 words of the novel draft and more words as notes in three files. I think I'm about halfway done (bright side of not having written a lot in the last few weeks) so probably I will be tackling new words by April 3.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 08:32 pm (UTC)And it's great that your longhand writing provided a useful back-up in case of tech failure, even if losing your files is definitely not a good thing. But it's great that you didn't lose them completely. I really ought to do more backups so there are more failsafes.
Well done for getting so much typed up! That is definitely an essential part of the writing right now! When I type up stuff from longhand, I often find myself doing a bit of editing at the time as well, or at least getting ideas for how to edit, or how to proceed after the part I've written.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 03:38 am (UTC)I'm starting off in style with an alibi sentence.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 08:33 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 04:36 am (UTC)Today I finished a long Prodigal Son fic for a friend for a word count of 955
no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 08:34 pm (UTC)Congrats on finishing the fic, that's great!
no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 08:36 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 05:58 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 08:35 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 05:58 am (UTC)Day 1 - 200 words on two SWG instadrabbles.
I hope to get a drabble or so each day, and keep up my fan flashworks streak. I'd like to get a bit more of my backlog of things posted to AO3 as well.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 08:40 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 08:33 am (UTC)Welp, I'm going to try this AGAIN. I've actually been writing these last few months, just not checking in. I don't know why! Sheesh.
I'm still working on the nonfiction project from last year; it's on hold for obvious reasons, but that's okay because it's still not done. Gah. The only thing saving me from tearing ALL my hair out is that the project is still quite interesting!
So anyway, I'll probably be just working on that, plus whatever else I can manage.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 08:41 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 09:44 am (UTC)eta: And thanks for hosting this month, of course! My manners have been lost in the void, it seems.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-02 08:48 pm (UTC)And you're welcome! I'm glad to host. :-)
no subject
Date: 2020-04-03 12:47 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-06 08:27 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2020-04-04 07:56 am (UTC)I put about 100 words down tonight.
no subject
Date: 2020-04-06 03:53 am (UTC)(I have become unstuck in time...)
no subject
Date: 2020-04-06 08:26 pm (UTC)