Here’s my plan to become a skilled writer (in a thousand days or less). — Day 1/1000
Last year, I decided to write on medium.com everyday for a 1000 days as a challenge to see if it would help me enforce a writing habit.
My logic was that if I spent writing a short blog post everyday then eventually I would build the muscle to write better and also discover what it is that I really want to write about.
I have explored several topics before and I have also considered taking up writing a novel.
However what has always stopped me is that I am just not able to get started.
I have been waiting for inspiration to strike, and when it does strike instead of putting it on paper, I end up doing some research which is adjacent to the idea and never end up making any progress.
Needless to say I have spent a long time, longingly, to be able to write my ideas and explore them and yet they have not moved.
Furthermore, It seems that I just can’t let go of this either. Each time I give up about my writing dreams, I keep coming up thinking I should try again.
The solution was this. Using the ideas from James Clear’s Atomic Habits, I would make a habit of writing something daily, regardless of quality.
As long as I spend some writing it and posting it online, my conditions were fulfilled.
James Clear’s instructions were, well, clear. You must standardise before you optimise.
Before I set out write my epic novel, filled with ambitious scenes of realistic characters having deep conversations, I needed to be able to be sit down and consistently write everyday.
At first I thought, it would suffice if I just wrote for myself, save it on my hard drive and not show my work to anyone else.
I have ended up writing 30,000 words which was pretty boring to write.
Later what I realized was that I needed people to see what I wrote so that they may judge and see if anything I write is good.
So here’s the challenge that I invite you to take up as well.
For a thousand days, write on medium everyday. Post a paragraph maybe?
It needs to be more than ten sentences, that’s the arbitrary rule that I have put up.
To give it a catchy name, I’ve chosen ‘One K writer’ that would also have a cool acronym of OK writer.
The point is that you standardise a pattern of writing something everyday for 1000 days and you post it online here for people to see how well you are doing.
You are giving your head a resistance training environment with this exercise.
You will be forced to use the wiring of your brain to keep creating.
And most importantly shut down that inner critic that keeps telling you that your writing sucks.
Remember what Ernest Heminghway said?
“Write drunk, edit sober.”
So do this for a thousand days, and after that sober up and read what you have written so far.
I have done this before till one hundred days, and did not go further.
This time I intend to fulfil on this challenge.
