Welcome to Write Every Day! This month, we're at my journal.
What is this, you may ask, dear reader? Why, just what it sounds like! It's a challenge to write something, even just a tiny little bit, every day - or failing that, however many days happens to work for you. We don't judge. There's no competition, no ranking, no consequence for not actually writing every day. We're just aiming for that, and supporting one another in the endeavour. Participation is entirely voluntary, so just because you see this, I'm not pressuring you to take part; but if you want to give it a go, feel free to join in even if you haven't done it before or aren't sure if you can really do it. You can always drop out for any reason, no need to say why, and we don't judge you for missing however many days.
Also, you choose what kind of writing you want to do and what you count. Some only count and report writing (and editing) fiction, some may be working on non-fiction, count blog posts or beta-reading, etc. I personally focus on fiction, both original fiction and fanfic. I tend to mull around and research on my original projects a good while before I start writing, so I report that sort of preparatory work as writing, too.
This is how it works: every day, I make a post for checking in, and you write a comment if you wrote that day. You can just say you wrote, or you can talk about what you worked on or how much you wrote or how it's going or whatever else you please. I tend to ramble a bit about other things in the beginning of the post, sometimes related to writing and sometimes not (I'm known to report on the weather or what I baked that day), because I like it - it feels like it grounds the writing-related post a bit. It hopefully means it's a bit more interesting for non-participating followers to keep seeing these posts on their feed every day for a month.
Anyway, I do my best to respond to everyone and to keep a tally of who's written on which day (when it gets long, I put the beginning under a cut). These posts crosspost to LiveJournal, so you can comment on either Dreamwidth or LJ, though be aware that these days the majority of the discussion etc. happens on DW. I'm known to make mistakes on the tally, so if you're missing when you shouldn't be, or you see some other error, just let me know! And if you miss a check-in or a few but you did write, feel free to report later, it's no huge problem to go back and add you to the tally later.
The challenge has been going on for a few years (I'm not even sure how many), hosted by different users every month. I've been doing it for, hmm, almost three years, and it's had an enormously great effect on my writing, because it makes me keep writing, and write even if I have doubts about myself and what I'm doing - and that, I've found, is the key. I've written every single day since I joined in, but you don't need to feel pressure if that doesn't work for you. It's just that 1) I can be really dogged about things like this, 2) I know I benefit from regular writing, so I try to keep at it. But we have a term "alibi sentence" for the sentence you write just for having written that day. The sentence can be one or two words if that's how things go for you. It still keeps up the habit, keeps writing in your mind, and makes you more likely to write more on a day when things go better. Or that's how it goes for many of us, anyhow. It doesn't necessarily work for everyone, and that's all right.
If you've got any questions, drop me a comment! You don't need to formally sign up, and you can join in any time, not just in the beginning of the month. Feel free to say hi if we haven't talked before or if this is your first time doing it or any other reason. And feel free not to, if you don't want to. :-)
Also, I should add that with all the icon space DW recently gave to paid users, I've got several new writing icons, so hosting this gives me a chance to use them, whee! (If you're on LJ, sorry, you're not seeing the nifty icons, I can't afford to keep paid accounts on both.)
What are you working on now?Many start the month by asking if you've got any particular writing goals this month etc. I'm having a day when my head turns all goals and timelines etc. into terrible pressure, so I'm not asking that. I'm just asking: do you want to mention what kind of writing you're working on these days, or if you've got any particular hopes or plans for your writing in the near future? No pressure to talk about it if you don't want to, though!
I've been planning an original novel for a while, and I've said for a couple of months now my goal is to start actually writing this month, and then I don't, because I've still got some things to work out so I won't grind to a halt in the early chapters. But anyway, I'm really hoping it won't take much longer to start really writing it. I'm trying to prioritize it now, and so I don't want to sign up to any fanfic events in the next few months - that sort of deadline pressure and the need to write to someone else's prompts/requests isn't working for me at the moment. I still want to work on my fanfics, but on my own terms. I do have a bingo card from
![[profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
genpromptbingo that I hope to get something done with, but I do my best not to stress about it.
How about you?
Today's WritingHow's the writing going? Have you written today?
As mentioned before, I've had a day when my brain turns just about anything into pressure and stress. I spent quite a while in the afternoon making detailed plans about how to go on about getting started on my novel - what to do which week etc. Well, it was partly useful to set down which are the final pieces I still need, both in research and in planning/notes, and what can wait until the writing or the editing phase. But it also made me terribly stressed out and then I couldn't actually write. Ah, head. It has flawed chemistry sometimes.
I managed to feel better by the late evening, though, and then I took a big sheet of paper and drew sketches of where one of my main character lives. That was fun. I'm terrible at drawing and at sketching houses, so there was no pressure to be good at it, and I got some ideas down. Then I spent quite a while writing about that place. I feel it's good for me to set out details of the important locations before I start writing, because I like grounding my fiction in places when I can, and it's easier to be specific if I actually know what rooms are in the house or how the yard looks and sounds like.
That's all for me - feel free to let me know how your writing's going!
![[community profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/community.png){kind=small}
