Year of Words: January — Small Steps

Welcome, one and all, to a Year of Words! This year, in 2024, I’ve set myself a very simple challenge: to write every single day.

I’m expecting — and hoping — that how this goal manifests will change as the year goes along, but as of now I’m aiming to write at least 100 words towards one of my projects — fictional or bloggish — daily. Present Me is slightly upset about the vagueness of this grand challenge, but Future Me is a very different person, and I know she’ll thank me for it.

I’m a sucker for trackers and spreadsheets, so I’ve been recording the amount of words I write at the end of each session, with funky counters calculating totals, averages, and the estimated goal by the end of the year if I keep up my current pace. That last one is really important for me: seeing the future culmination of my small daily steps is really motivating, a powerful tool for an easily disheartened creative.

So, what have I achieved so far?

I spent the illusory week between Christmas Day and New Year’s planning a short story set in Nerai, and so far January has been almost completely dedicated to writing it. I like giving my writing projects thematic name-tags, and this one is Project Rook. It’s the story of an aging warrior, a fierce widow, and the monster that plagues their village. As of today, I’ve written a total of over 8,500 words towards Rook, which is a huge personal achievement, especially for an obsessive planner and chronic procrastinator. I’ve hit a slight wall with the plot, but I’m trying my best to keep things going with a quantity-over-quality approach to this draft.

I do have some larger targets in mind — I’d love to hit 150k by 2025, including a first attempt at Project Pine (a novel I’ve been meaning to write for years) and maybe a short story or two — but I’m trying my best to take things, as the challenge suggests, one day at a time. Who knows where I’ll be in my journey of wordsmithery in eleven months? Regardless, my singular aim is that someway, somehow, I will be putting words together for the whole of 2024.

I’ll be reflecting and recording my progress every so often, so watch this space. But until then, fare well, wherever you fare,

— H