Apr. 1st, 2018

auroracloud: vintage drawing of a woman and a lamppost against a text background (writing and lady)
Welcome to Write Every Day for April 2018! This month, I'm hosting the challenge for the first half of the month, and from April 16 until the end of the month it will be hosted by [personal profile] sylvanwitch. Normally we have one host per month, but April ended up not being very good for any one participant, so we decided that sharing the month was the most practical way to go about it. I welcome both old and new participants for this first half of April!

What is this?

It's just what it says on the tin (well, title). Participants aim to write something every day. One person hosts the challenge in their journal each month, and every day, they create a post where others can check in about whether they've written and anything else they may want to say (e.g. how much you wrote or what you were working on or whatever about your writing/life/something is causing you to tear your hair out or jump from you). You don't need to tell anything else than that you wrote, though. The host keeps a tally of who wrote, posting it as a part of the next day's entry, so people can see themselves on the list (or not) and hopefully feel motivated! The host also aims to provide comments, encouragement, cheerleading etc. to everyone checking in. You don't have to check in on the days when you didn't write, but you can feel free to comment anyway if you want.

The best part is, there is no minimum to how much you should write! Even just one sentence a day is writing. (When you write just a sentence, in order to have written that day, we call it an alibi sentence. See, it's common enough that it needs its own term!) There is no competition, no minimum word count, no pressure. no ranking, no "punishment" or shame for missing a day or a few or a week - just the challenge to try to write even a little bit every day, or on as many days as you can manage.

Why does this work? Many of us find that it helps us to keep a regular habit of writing, but without a pressure of how much you should write. Because life happens, and sometimes you're busy, sometimes you're exhausted, sometimes you're sick, sometimes words just won't come together. But if you write even a few words each day, you keep it active in your mind, and the threshold to writing becomes lower; and so it's gets easier to write and to have those days when your writing goes better.

I've participated in this since August 2016, and it's been wonderful for my writing. I've written so much more than I ever would have without it. There are so many days when I've set out to write even that one alibi sentence, and I've ended up writing several hundreds of words. Some days I only managed a sentence or two, but eventually those sentences added up, and eventually the writing started flowing again. Plus, you get to know new people and get a supportive little community of writers. I used to do this kind of thing on my own several years ago, but eventually I fell out of the habit and didn't get back into it before I joined Write Every Day. The community makes it easier to stick to it.

You can write anything - fan fiction, original fiction, non-fiction (say, journal entries, academic writing, articles), poetry, planning and notes for a future text... Editing absolutely counts, too, even if you end up removing more words than you write; and some participants count e.g. beta-reading and commenting. Frankly, it's up to you what you want to count.

If you want to see how it goes in practice, [personal profile] ysilme hosted it last month, and [personal profile] shopfront before her, so you can check out their journals.

Goals, discussion, etc.

Do you have any specific goals for this month, any particular projects you'll especially be working on? Anything else related to writing you feel like saying now? Feel free to tell in comments!

I've spent much of the early part of the year trying to get myself ready to write a new novel draft. I'm trying to figure out the right balance in not planning too much so that I never get around to actually writing, but planning enough that the story doesn't lose momentum after the first 7,000 words because I don't know what I'm doing after introducing the characters. I think that with one of my novels-in-planning, I'm getting close to the phase where I can start writing it: so my goal this month is to actually begin writing this novel. I've written a lot of notes about the story, the characters, the settings and other details, I've kept it in my head for a few months, which is usually enough brewing. I've even written a little text that might go into the first draft, but I want to begin a focused, daily effort of actually writing the draft, not just notes. I'm hoping I might get there during the next couple of weeks. Exciting times!

I'd love to write some fan fic and maybe finally finish something that isn't for an exchange, but I don't know if it's happening this month or not.

Today's writing

Today, I returned from spending the Easter at my mother's, and I was soooo tired. I guess it's partly because I went skiing on the two previous days, and because I'm still in a state where social interaction exhausts me easily. So frankly, I spent a lot of today just lying in bed and resting, or lazily browsing comics or poetry books. And in the evening, when I set down to write, I instead spent ages browsing the novels and novellas published by Tor.com on their website, considering buying something. Oops.

But I managed to do some notes for my novel-thing in the end. I'm working on fleshing out the settings and the supporting cast; when I'm done with that, I'll hopefully be ready to write. Though I'll probably have to tweak some plot notes after that.

How about you all? Let me know in the comments!

My entries are posted on both Dreamwidth and LiveJournal, and you can comment in either post. If you miss a check-in, feel free to comment later!

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