Lessons From Writing 40,000 Words In A Month
In February I set myself a challenge: write 40,000 words in one month. There were big and little reasons for this. One is that I want to write a book, but every time I got an idea I would try to squeeze it into a structure and write out the chapter headings but that also squeezed the little spark of life out of the idea. So I decided that rather than start with the structure, I would start with writing. Just writing anything and see what would emerge out of it. In the middle of lockdown, it also felt like something to do and think about and focus on that wasn’t all of this.
I decided on 40,000 words because earlier in the year I found that if I set a timer for 30 minutes and wrote without letting my fingers leave the keyboard I would write a thousand words. 10,000 a week therefore seemed doable: 5 hours a week or 1 hour a day. Sometimes I wrote paragraphs that popped into my head, sometimes I wrote about what I was feeling and sometimes I picked a theme from a list I’d made and wrote about everything I could possibly think of about it. To track my weekly word count I drew squares in my planner which I would colour in every 100 words, and I shared this progress on Instagram (see the Project Squares highlight).
I did, indeed, complete the 40,000 words, but it wasn’t anything like what I expected. I had thought I could fit in my hour a day and still get on with all my other work and it would be nice little addition to my routine. In reality, it was all-consuming. It was intensely emotional. I fell behind on social media, I fell behind on the podcast, I didn’t publish a blog post all month. I know that the majority of those 40,000 words won’t be usable for anything. And there were many lessons learned – which I am sharing here.
So much faffing
The idea of it only taking 1 hour a day to write 40,000 words is fine when you don’t take your fingers off the keyboard and you get straight to it. Neither of these things happened. I learned how much of a faffer I am when it comes to focusing in on a task. In order to do 30 minutes of focused writing, there was usually an hour of looking at my phone, drinking tea, half-heartedly writing sentences, changing my mind on what I was going to write about, and just staring at the screen. This wasn’t something I’d picked up on before, but became hyper aware of it as my writing “hour” began taking up three hours of my day. This is something I’m now trying to build into my weekly planning by making sure there’s white space for the faffing.
You can even when you think you can’t
There was a day when I was particularly hormonal and emotional, and I couldn’t get out of my head and into writing about the theme I’d chosen. I couldn’t write at all, I was just stewing and stewing – and of course, I was feeling guilty for not getting on with my words for the day on top of all that too. Sometimes the best way to deal with that is to give yourself permission to step back and take a rest, but on that day that didn’t feel like the best option because I really needed to accomplish something. To prove to myself that I can follow through.
So I told myself I’d just write a paragraph about how I was feeling. I got rid of the set theme and I wrote short, blunt sentences about things I had seen and felt that day. And at the end of the first paragraph I felt I had something to say in another, and another. And I ended up writing over 1000 words, after which not only did I feel a kind of release, but I felt like I’d kept a promise to myself. I’d thought myself incapable of writing that day but I proved that even when I think I can’t, I can.
Unable to write anything else
As I touched on above, I wasn’t able to write any blog posts or really many Instagram posts during the whole of February. I had really thought the writing would slot in around this other work but it became all-consuming not only in the time it was taking but in the mental energy it required. I could not get out of one mode and into another; it was as if I’d forgotten how to write a blog post and not just stream of consciousness.
I had thought “writing is writing” and it never occurred to me that switching between the types would be an issue. I find this such an interesting facet of creativity and our brains, that within “writing” there are so many layers and while the “equipment” (words) is the same, it’s as different as using a paintbrush to create a miniature watercolour or paint a house.
It would be easy to paint this as laziness or being unproductive because it seems like it should be easy to do both. But I was incapable, my brain clunked and whirred but could not find the right gear. And so maybe this is a reminder to extend grace to ourselves, look at how much we’re asking of our equipment and be gentle around our expectations of it.
Much more in tune with myself
When I posted my monthly review on Instagram I mentioned that February had been by far the most difficult month of the pandemic for me, and I think that is also due to the writing project. Writing my streams of consciousness every day meant that the lid was left off my heart for the whole month, and it was very raw to have everything right there at the surface as I was going about my day. This was really debilitating at times, but it was also helpful.
It helped me to understand certain relationships in my life more differently, it helped me revise some of my recent history, it helped me to question what I accept. It helped me to feel closer to myself and understand my drivers and how I interact with the world – and how I might do that better. It helped me to embrace the fullness of what is true for me, and ultimately that feels like a gift.
You have to give yourself the satisfaction of completion
I’ve spoken a bit about “feeling capable” here, and completing things is a huge part of how we build self-trust – by following through, fulfilling promises to ourselves and creating evidence of our capability. However, we have to create the opportunity to feel that sense of completion. It is as natural as breathing to move onto the next part of the to do list and to file something away as “Done” without actually joining the two ends of the circle and getting that completion. We need to make a conscious effort to break the never-ending march onto the “next thing”.
Having the squares to colour in every week really helped with this – seeing progress and watching completion happen in real time as I coloured in the final square. What I didn’t do, was celebrate the very end of the project. I had left a couple of hundred words to do on the last day of February, but after cramming a few Zoom calls into the evening I ended up typing them out quickly in the last half an hour of the day to just get it done. The following week was busy with a workshop and moving and I just…didn’t complete the circle. I didn’t colour in the last squares. I didn’t post the fulfilment of the journey on Instagram. So this, clearly, is a lesson that needs continual re-learning.
“There is a time for becoming, and a time for writing about it”
When I was looking for quotes to include in the 100 Ways To Grow With Soul ebook, I came upon this one I’d written down from Glennon Doyle: “there is a time for becoming, and a time for writing about it”. Do you ever see something that you know is so deeply true for where you are but you’re annoyed because it’s not what you want to be true? That was me with this quote, “goddammit she’s right”.
This project started because I wanted, in a month or so, to go through the words and be able to piece together a really wonderful book. I think that will still happen, but it won’t be in a month or so. It’s all too present, and the wisdom is still to come. This is my time for becoming, not the time to write about it. And actually, the becoming is what really deserves my attention.
