Something Like Life

Not the official one (although that’s where I got the idea and a lot of the source idea for my own challenge), but the one that I chose to put myself through this past month. To keep you in suspense, I won’t divulge how well I did until I tell you what I learned.

1. It has taught me that the story has a mind of it’s own and that an idea, no matter how simple, can expand and expand and expand until it bursts into a life of it’s own. I started this challenge with an idea that I thought to myself “how the hell am I going to get 50K words out of THAT?” Here I am at the end of the month, and I’m not even sure I am half finished. Throwing words to the page has really taught me a lesson in how important the story itself is.

2. It has taught me that in order to acheive a goal, you have to break it down into smaller parts and keep on task as much as possible. Doing this challenge has shown me that my “writer’s block” is just a figment of my imagination most of the time and that if I just sit down and FORCE myself to start writing SOMETHING, the ideas and the words will eventually come. There were many times in the past month I sat in my chair and stared at the screen, dreading writing a particular scene because the ideas weren’t there. But something inside of me would say “just start typing, J” and I would do it. When I did it, the rough patches would melt away after a few minutes and the story would start to flow again. Sometimes I would have to type over a thousand words to get that flow, but it always came if I typed long enough. Yesterday was a very good example of such  a day.

3. It has taught me that the first draft of a story is not a first draft. It is a mere chunk of clay with which to use to shape a final manuscript. I gave credit to that idea from someone on another website, but I thought the analogy itself was very insightful.

4. It has taught me that finishing the story is of utmost importance and that editting is reserved for later drafts. I used to try and keep up with my editting as I typed, and as a result it would burn me out and I would never finish. I’ve learned thought this, however, that writing the story is where the sheer fun is and that EDITTING (which is coming soon to a theater near you, lol) is the part that really sucks. But for that there is EdNoWriMo, which I predict I will take on in June after I finish my story this month and let it cool for a couple of weeks.

5. It has taught me that if I truly believe I can reach a goal, I will find a way to reach it by doing what I can when I can. It has really reinforced the idea that getting anything accomplished involves doing it in small, insignificant chunks that, over time, really add up to a whole. It’s taught me the importance of writing 500 words in a day or 50 words in a day and how even those little chunks of writing will add up over time. This is also something that I can use in other areas of my life.

So, here I am, at the end of the month. The goal was to write 50K words in the month of April (30 days). Where did I land?

Final Word Count:  51,197 words

I surprised myself with this challenge and it was no easy feat. I especially surprised myself yesterday, when, upon waking up, I was at 43K words. I had 7000 words to write in 24 hours, and I had to work all day and had my kids all evening. But breaking it up in small chunks, not only did I reach my goal, I supassed it by over a thousand words.

I will definately take this challenge again. Perhaps I will do it again in November and take the REAL, official challenge.

The things that I take away from this, however, have changed the way I view writing forever.