99 Days

Day 99

99 days of 100 words a day. Here are a few kernels of wisdom that I’ve gotten during the challenge.

1. Writing whatever you want is a blessing and a curse. It’s a blessing because it allows you to release your creativity onto the page without reservation and judgement. It’s a curse because writing whatever you want probably means that it’s not your best writing. In fact, I’m 100% sure this isn’t my best writing. Writing whatever you want is the first step in a long process. After you get down your thoughts, you have to rewrite for your writing to be any good. Except for poetry. The problem with poetry is that you have to be inspired to write it. If you wait for inspiration, you won’t produce much.
2. This is a phase, not the end result. This process is just a phase. I wanted to get better at letting ideas flow onto the page and not be so critical — great! However, I think the next phase in my writing I will have to practice the art of rewriting and editing. How long I spend on a piece is usually directly correlated with how proud of it I am.
3. Writing in the morning is best. Of course me being the lazy person I am, I didn’t wake up and write in the morning. Because of it, I think my writing suffers. Whatever the next phase of my writing is will involve me writing in the morning. Writing right before bed produced some lazy ass results.
4. You get what you put in. Sometimes I took the writing seriously and other times I didn’t. When I didn’t, I was cheating myself. When I took it seriously, I noticed my writing improving. Don’t half-ass it.
5. If you do half-ass it though that’s better than not assing it at all. I will say that despite my disappointment in some of my writing in the first 99 days, I am proud that I can say I did something for 99 days straight. There were plenty of times when I wanted to give up, but I didn’t. I’m not sure what to do with that information, but I think I’m going to be proud of it.