What I learned by writing every day
Thinking of a daily writing challenge? Here’s what to expect
I set myself a daily writing challenge in the middle of September.
It’s something new and developing writers are often told to do in order to develop their skills. Writing every day is a good way to develop discipline and focus, and is also touted as a way of building an audience.
But does it actually work?
There was only one way to find out, and that was to try it myself.
I set myself a number of targets. I would post articles of 200 words or longer every day for at least 100 days. I had also gave a time limit of 45 minutes, but in practice I soon dropped that. I also used my first daily writing story to set the agenda for the days ahead.
So how did I fare?
1. How to write through thick and thin
I developed a regular writing practice, and became more comfortable writing in unlikely places such as in cafés or on the train to work. I also speeded up, but that’s not difficult if you’re me and can easily spend up to two weeks polishing one 750-word article. Although I met the word limit easily, I’d often spend frustrating evenings wrestling unruly sentences or struggling to prune excess verbiage.
Then there were other days when the writing flowed onto the page and I was finished within half an hour.
But that’s the nature of writing, or indeed anything worthwhile.
There are times when you find yourself in the flow, and there are the times when it is tough. As in really, really tough. There were days when writing was the last thing I wanted to do, but I kept going.
2. Learning to live with imperfection
I learned posting stories every day involves a trade-off. Your daily writing may be fresh and immediate, but there is a price. Time pressures mean limited (or no) time for editing, resulting in missing or duplicated words or stories that are a little rough round the edges. I even managed to give two different stories the same title.
I shudder to think of it even now. The horror.
Not surprisingly, some stories were poor or didn’t perform as well as I had expected. I put this down to not having enough time to finesse, but there’s a wider issue at play here. Some stories will invariably underperform, regardless of whether you publish daily or monthly.
However, daily writing gives you the opportunity to do better the following day. It’s a very practical way of helping you grow your resilience.
3. Seeking inspiration and finding my voice
One of the challenges of writing every day is that you have to seize inspiration from wherever you can find it. Most of the time it was something I’d seen or heard that day. Occasionally it would be a news event, or something that intrigued me at that time. On one occasion, I found myself writing about sexy toilet paper.
Daily writing plays havoc with any attempt to develop a theme, as my tags will attest. Nevertheless, some themes did emerge. I wrote multiple stories on subjects including nature, people-watching, humour, musings on the world and what I’d best describe as ‘vaguely self-help’.
Oh, and I branched off into poetry now and again. I certainly wasn’t expecting that.
Daily writing helped me discover my writing voice, which brings together elements of observation, reflection and poetic enquiry.
I was also pleasantly surprised at the response to some of my nature and people-watching stories, which did better than I was expecting. One story even made it into Medium’s ‘culture’ section.
4. A few important points to consider
Writing every day is not easy.
You need to be prepared for editing mistakes, poorly performing stories and those days when inspiration has taken a holiday. However, treat these challenges as an opportunity to build resilience rather than drawbacks if you are to get the most of a daily writing challenge.
Despite this, you need to consider a few things before you start. The most obvious is whether you can find the time. You might think you need only fifteen or twenty minutes a day, but that can be a challenge for busy people.
Daily writing is also not the best approach for reflective or in-depth pieces.
You may also find that daily writing offers diminishing returns after a while. If you find this is the case (as I did), it’s probably best to stop. I had initially planned to write daily for 100 days, but stopped after 50. Writing was beginning to feel like a chore, and I was conscious I was scrabbling around for ideas.
Is this an admission of failure? Not really. I’d got as much as I could out of writing daily, and I’d also built up a long and growing list of ideas for longer pieces which need more than a day to write. I wanted to move on to these.
5. Should you take the plunge?
Only you can make that decision.
Having said that, I’d strongly recommend daily writing if you are a new writer who wants to build their writing muscles, or an established writer looking for the literary equivalent of a seven-minute work-out. I’d also suggest trying it out even if you are not absolutely sure, just to see if it suits you.
I found clear benefits to daily writing. I’ve become a much speedier writer, developed a regular writing habit and built my resilience. I am also beginning to develop an individual voice, and have a clearer idea of my themes.
All in all, not a bad result.
Are you thinking of starting a daily writing challenge? Have you recently finished one? What worked well and what didn’t go so well. Happy to hear your thoughts (and answer any questions) below.
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