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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 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)