Learning Through Writing – 10 Things that 100 Days of Writing Taught Me

If you’ve followed me for a while, you probably know AZ Pascoe and writing go together like peanut butter and jam (or jelly, for any Americans). Well, at least in my mind they do. Historically, I’ve gone through periods of significant productivity, and periods of… well, not a lot of productivity, which seems to applies to a lot of writers. And I decided that I wanted to try and address that. 

The Plan

The long and short of it is: in the past, I wrote sometimes—though typically not as many times as I’d like, or feel like I should—and other times, I really didn’t write much at all. I would go through phases where I wrote frequently, but the weekends always seemed to elapse without pen touching paper. And earlier this year, while doing a writing subject at uni, my lecturer mentioned a friend of hers who had committed to writing every day for 30 minutes, no matter what. He’d just ticked off 200-something days, and I thought: ‘I could do that. I should do that.’ So I started.

The Result

Today, I sat down and wrote for 30 minutes. Now, that doesn’t sound very exciting, and, to be fair, this is a fairly standard event in my life. But today was a milestone—because today was my 100th straight day in a row of daily free-writing. Some days, when we were travelling, I only wrote for 10 minutes. But it was 10 minutes more than I might otherwise have done, an important mental shift for me. And as the days started mounting one after the other, I became more and more determined to keep the streak unbroken. It became a personal challenge, a gauntlet I’d thrown down to myself. And if there’s anything I love in life… It’s a challenge. 

The Lessons

So, what did 100 days of writing teach me? For ease, I’ve condensed it into a handy list. I considered doing a list of 100 items, but that just seemed excessive, so 10 it is.

1. Some days will be absolutely phenomenal. An amazing dream that lingers after waking, an idea that nags at the back of your mind, an image you 
2. Some days will be terrible. The page will mock you, the pen will run dry when you’re half way through a sentence, and you’ll be reduced to writing about how the candle flame flickers against the pre-dawn darkness. 
3. But every day will teach you something, if you let it. Maybe it’s just that you freak out without planning (a good thing to know about yourself!) and to have an outline to work to; or perhaps it’s that you default to writing female protagonists, so you can decide to challenge yourself to mix it up a little more. 
4. Know your process: what tends to work for you? A favourite chair, a favourite pen, a perfect time of day that helps you get the words onto the page. Ticking those boxes can be reassuring and help spur your writing.
5. But letting go of those ‘needs’ can also be incredibly freeing. Even a simple change of routine—sometimes I couldn’t write early in the morning because we had something else on—reminded me that I didn’t need that ideal situation to write, I could do it any time. It was a tiny test I passed (and continue to pass) and passing it gave me confidence.  
6. You probably have some favourite, fallback phrases and ideas. I, apparently, love to talk about how my characters get knots in their stomachs when they’re nervous. Or angry. Or almost anything really: I talk about stomachs a lot. 
7. Inspiration isn’t a magical being we catch in toadstool rings in our garden. I’ve spoken about this before (here), but it’s empowering to let go of thinking that you need to feel a certain way in order to write; like with Lesson 5, it teaches you that the magic in the writing process isn’t the perfect idea or the perfect spot… It’s you. 
8. Neither is motivation. By making something into a habit (like I talk about here and here), you do it almost automatically. I won’t say entirely automatically, because I invariably find that no matter how much I write, it takes a lot of effort. But rather than, as with Lesson 7, waiting for that spark of wanting to write, just make it something you do, no matter how you feel. Continue on to Lesson 10 to find out why. 
9. Not having an ‘idea’ isn’t the disaster it often looks like at first glance. Some of my coolest stories have come out of ‘not really have an idea’. I recognise that in that sense I’m maybe a little strange. But sometimes the freedom of idea-less-ness means you can discover something you’d never imagined! Like my strange taxidermist guy who turned out to be a—wait. Don’t want to give that one away just yet. 
10. Even on my worst days, I never regret writing. If I write for 30 minutes, I produce a little over a page in my Moleskine notebook, or roughly 500-600 words… No matter how I felt before hand, I always feel buoyed with achievement once I complete my daily free writing. It’s my favourite accomplishment, because regardless of what I’ve written, I can always find something that I like in there, somewhere. And I get to fall back in love with writing every day. 

So, with those pretty great lessons in mind (if I do say so myself), I guess the biggest takeaway is that, for me, it thrills and stimulates and motivates me to write every day. It empowers me as a writer. It makes me feel like one day I’m going to get there… Which is a really encouraging way to feel when you’re getting a lot of rejections!

And now that that milestone’s been passed, I guess I’ll see you all at 200 days. That’s the plan, anyway. Wish me luck!

-Ana.