You can listen to this post read aloud as a podcast or read it for yourself below:
On May 31st, I started a two-week online writing challenge where the goal was to write 1000 words per day for two weeks. Or something thereabouts. Jami Attenburg writes in her book 1000 Words, “I see [writing 1000 words] as a good day’s work, a meetable goal, a step towards finishing a project, a simple metric for creative output. It’s both a quantifiable goal and an inspirational concept. I know plenty of published writers who write far fewer words a day (and those who write far more!), and they produce what they need to produce either way. It’s just a number, in the end. The last thing I want to do is slot people into an entrenched system that may not be healthy for everyone” (6-7).
This is the second time this year I’ve engaged with one of her writing challenges and I’ve found two contradicting things to be true.
1) Both times it gave me the kick-in-the-pants motivation to put my butt in the chair and produce writing, even when I didn’t feel like it. It brought me out of a slump and got me going again, just that tiny bit of online encouragement and accountability (Will I be able to post my word count in the slack today? Can I get it done?!) Both times I’ve written more than I would have if I wasn’t doing the challenge, and both times the momentum carried me past the challenge and kept me going further.
2) Both times I didn’t meet the goals of the challenge perfectly. I missed the complete word count target. I couldn’t write every day of the challenge. This always invites feelings of failure or frustration. It poses the internal dilemma of how I will choose to look at the work I’ve accomplished. In a positive encouraging light? Or a negative discouraging one?
Here is my writing log from the challenge:
Day one: 1260 words.
Day two: 1194 words.
Day three: 996
Day four: 950
These first four days felt great. I tucked into my memoir manuscript and got to work. A couple totals slightly under the 1000k mark, but the overages from the first two days averaged everything out. I was doing it!
Day five: 800 words. This was the day I wrote my last blog post about not listening to my own bullshit (link at the end of this post). This was the day where the challenge started to feel harder and I was blogging my way into encouragement for myself. Don’t listen to negative self-talk. Keep going!
Day six: 75 words. Here I face-planted into failure. At least that’s what it felt like. I opened my memoir. Nothing. I opened my novel. Nothing. I pulled out an empty notebook and attempted a random word writing prompt exercise. I stalled 75 terrible words in. I gave up.
Day seven: 278 words. Still feeling like I was staring at a wall from the previous day, I had planned weeks before to take my daughters on an all-day school lake field trip. There was literally no time for writing at my desk. I did manage to hand-scrawl 278 words in a journal while I sat at the lake and watched kids play. I told myself it was better than nothing, but it didn’t feel good. It didn’t feel like productive work on a project. It mostly felt like spinning wheels. Sigh.
Day eight: 1001 words. I got back in the saddle. I started on an entirely new essay since I felt stalled out on my current projects. It felt better.
Day nine: 0 words. I took a break. Deliberately. I was tired. I couldn’t keep going at this pace.
Day ten: 1476 words. The break did me good. The essay finished itself. Hurrah.
Day eleven: 1441 words. I got back to my memoir.
Day twelve: 0 words. Another day when nothing happened.
Day thirteen: 766 words. Not the full word count, but better than nothing. Right?!
Day fourteen: 1233 words. A stronger finish.
My total word count came to 11,470 words. Only a little over 2.5k shy of the 14k target goal. Three and a half of those days it felt like I didn’t really write at all. But I did write for eight and half of those days pretty solidly. Is 11,470 words a win in two weeks?
Absolutely, my writing friend Caitie would tell me. We texted each other on and off throughout the two weeks. One day she wrote: “Yesterday’s count was 37 😅 which is 37 more words than 0 words.” Oh how I love this stance, even down to the laughing/crying emoji. Because this journey is such a mix of tears and laughter, joy and frustration, all simultaneously. If I feel like a writing failure one day, am I going to let that stop me from putting my butt back in the chair the next day and trying again? Can I give myself grace AND motivation to do better?
Two Things True
Yesterday I finished listening to an audiobook on parenting by Dr. Becky Kennedy titled Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be. Her conclusion chapter was all about holding tension—two things can be true at the same time. I can be a good parent, and I can be having a hard time in the way I’m handling myself or my child. She writes, “We have to feel good inside to change. This is a paradox, I know. We have to be kind to ourselves and accept who we are today to be brave enough to make changes tomorrow. We cannot change from a place of guilt or shame. This won’t work in parenting or any other area of life.”
I’m applying her thoughts to my parenting of course, but this morning it strikes me how it also applies to my writing and any kind of goal-making in general.
Kennedy points out, “As soon as we feel bad or unlovable or unworthy, all of our energy is diverted to escaping this feeling. There is no energy available to change and try new things. No wonder change is so darn hard. The key to change lies in learning to tolerate the guilt or shame that comes up for us. Seeing these feelings as part of the change process, not an enemy of the change process. […] Two things are true. We have to hold two seemingly oppositional truths at once. I have done things I’m not proud of, and I am good inside. […] I’ve been doing the best I can, and I want to do better.”
Negative self-talk, shame, and comparison don’t serve me in working towards my goals. It also doesn’t help to completely let myself off the hook every day and say, “oh well.” No book manuscript will get finished this way.
What if my two thoughts after a harder (or non-existent) day of writing scrolled through my brain as follows:
- I didn’t meet my desired goals today, but I am still a good writer who will get up and try again another day.
- Life took over today and didn’t go how I expected. That is frustrating. I’m not a failure. I am still a writer inside who will find another way to get words down on paper another day.
- I am a good writer who is having a hard time today.
Sometimes intentional breaks or self-nourishment are also steps in the goal-meeting process. Sue Monk Kidd writes about her creative process, “Inevitably I get discouraged and lose creative direction or passion […] When that happens, I’ve learned to drop down into the creative nothing. I do sacred dawdling. I turn to nature. I lie on the earth or dig in the dirt. I get still, go silent, rest, take herbal baths, listen to Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto or James Taylor full blast. I buy flowers. I drink cinnamon tea, play with my dogs, meditate, and create rituals. The main thing is to stop struggling and nourish yourself. When you nourish yourself, your creative energy is renewed. You are able to pick up your lyre again and sing” (from The Dance of the Dissident Daughter 244).
My Reality
My two-week writing challenge ended on a Friday. The following Monday my kids went to Mimi’s house for a week of VBS and I had four and a half luxurious days at a Benedictine Monastery retreat center in utter solitude and silence. I didn’t go into the time with hard writing goals. I went expecting to rest and decompress, to let my soul expand in the silence, to engage in some spiritual contemplation, and probably to do some writing. Perhaps I could finish the missing 3K word count from the challenge.
I wrote 14K words in four days. I all just came pouring out. Apparently, I would write more books if I had more time to myself. It was an exhilarating high. One that left my brain feeling exhausted at the end of each day, in the most satisfactory way. The next time I have five days to myself (probably years from now), will it be okay if I don’t write like that again? That was likely a unique experience that won’t repeat itself. Can that be okay too?
The answer needs to be yes.
Since leaving the retreat center, I’ve spent ten days not writing a single word. Most of that was out of my control. I picked up my kids and went back to a to-do list that included a visit to the DMV. Then a road-trip with my girls to visit my grandmother in Oklahoma, followed by planning and hosting a birthday party for my four-year-old. The next morning was booked with a glucose test at my midwife clinic. These are all parts of my full life. Some of them I love. Some of them I wish I didn’t have to deal with. Most days I wish for more quiet than I have in which for words to find their way to paper. But I do what I can when I can. If I don’t, then I deny a part of my soul.
It’s all part of the ebbs and flow of reality. Some days the stream flows with abundant water. Some days its a dry creek bed. This week I’m attempting to get back at it. 744 words yesterday. This post today. All while my extroverted six-year-old is home on summer break and interrupting me in my office every fifteen minutes because she has a hard time playing by herself. Sigh. Yet this too is part of my world. Can I embrace the reality that is my life, not hating its limitations, yet also stretching to reach for something just beyond where I currently stand? Like 1000 more words this morning.
What do you need to give yourself grace for? What do you need to stretch for? Now. Today. In this moment. I dare you to lift up on your tippy toes and go for it. And to be kind to yourself if you happen to fall over in the process.
References:
- 1000 Words by Jami Attenberg
- Good Inside: A Practical Guide to Becoming the Parent You Want to Be by Dr. Becky Kennedy
- My previous post from the beginning of my writing challenge: Don’t Fall for Your Own Bullshit
- An older post about stretchy goals: Expectation vs. Hope
You are most welcome in this space. If you would like to have my writing delivered directly to your inbox you can subscribe below or find me on Substack @danielleklafter. If you have thoughts, feedback, or questions, you can contact me via the contact form on my website. I welcome dialogue.
Shalom.
Danielle Klafter 