Before this year, it had been a long, long time since I wrote any fiction. Being busy with other projects, juggling home educating three kids (even before lockdown started) and general Life, the urge to delve into creating worlds and characters wasn’t even there.
Which was fine. Sometimes you just need a break to recharge, to get those creative juices flowing again. Then in January, I started to feel the stirring of a story idea, born from many half-finished ideas that had come before. And this time, I felt ready to write it.
The only question was when?
There literally weren’t enough hours in the day, especially when most of my work was being done in the evenings after the toddler passed out as it was. There just wasn’t another scrap of time that could be set aside to write a novel. I nearly gave up, but then I started to think.
In the past, I’d really enjoyed taking part in National Novel Writing Month; getting 50K written in a month was a fabulous way to get a huge chunk of a novel written. I knew, however, that maintaining that level of intensity wasn’t going to work for me now. Writing over a thousand words a night on top of the other things I was writing just felt like far too much pressure, and I would be setting myself up to fail. A smaller number of words though might work. So I tentatively started, with no end point in mind, just writing 300 words a day. As of this week, I’ve hit 18k. It feels really, really good!
So. I wondered whether anyone else would like to join in the journey. The only requirement: writing at least 300 words a day. No pressure, no stress, it can be as polished or not as you like. I’ll be posting from the @Novel_300 Twitter account to hold myself accountable, and using the hashtag #Novel300.
Whether you’re starting a new project or looking for the impetus to complete an existing WIP, it would be great to talk about all things writing-related.
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