How would you feel if you wrote 25,000 words in a month?
Is that your normal routine or does it seem a long way off? For me, it feels like quite a stretch. It’s only 1,000 words a day, and even gives you a few days off, but have I been doing it regularly? No. Life just gets in the way.
My poor notebook feels very unloved.
In April I took part in the Screw Work Lets Play 30 Day Challenge. You pick your own challenge which, crucially, must be something you find FUN, and work alongside 200 other people to produce something tangible in a month. Being told to have fun – I can get on board with that.
I built a website from scratch when this challenge happened in April, one I’d been wanting to make for ages but had put off because I didn’t know quite how to do it and was a bit scared of how it would turn out. It was the combination of the overall ‘we can do this!’ feeling alongside weekly accountability check-ins with a small group to hold myself that I really liked. And having something solid to show at the end of a month is such a brilliant feeling that I can’t wait to do it again in October. This time I’m going to write 25,000 words of a novel, and will be hanging out in the writing group on the forum.
True, I could just sit myself down and do it without joining the challenge. But honestly, would I? Experience tells me that the answer is no, that I’d have the best of intentions but get nothing done. Yet another month would race past before I’d even set aside time for writing. And I want to do this enough to find ways of making it happen.
So why this instead of NaNoWriMo? Both are great, actually. The reasons that I’m doing this instead this year are that: A) I had a great time doing SWLP in April and have seen the results, and B) both times I’ve done NaNo I’ve hated what I wrote. It’s fantastic for making people just sit down and write, but the ability to pick your own target (whether that’s wordcount, chapters, or something else) on SWLP means you can plan and use it to develop as a writer rather than just panicking and throwing anything on the page.
Because it’s a couple of weeks away still there’s time to prepare properly. Following my own advice, I’m going to release my inner geek and write something I really want to, not what I think other people will think is ‘good’. I’ll try to remember to share my planning progress on the Facebook page, but roughly speaking I’m going to spend next week brainstorming and looking back through old work, the week after choosing one idea and sketching a very rough story-arc outline, and then fill in the gaps to create a plan. Exciting!
Full price will be around £200 but you can you can get it for £147 by signing up before 19th September (that’s this coming Monday!). The website has plenty more information about how it all works and results other people have seen so take a look around and sign up here.
I’ll see you in the writers forum. Challenge me up!
November’s Retreat
Well, here we are again. Since my last retreat update, the Urban Writers Retreats have turned 3 years old! I can’t honestly say it’s been easy; many times I’ve thought that if my aim was to create something cool and make a little money, I might have been better off getting a bar job and taking up painting. Sometimes I end up spending all of my time working on the retreats rather than writing, which rather defeats the object.
But, aside from the fact that I’m terrible at painting, seeing how happy it makes people to walk away with another chunk of novel done and hearing that ‘oh, what a great idea’ from writers, knowing I’m able to provide the sort of space people long for, tells me this is a good idea and that I should persevere. And, of course, I’m one of you. I’m one of the people who wants to write but who sometimes finds it hard to make room for the writing I really want to do (and am therefore a little scared of). I know this benefits writers because it benefits me.
And so my little retreats, after starting inauspiciously in a room with a half-dead mouse in the corner (a story for another time perhaps), have made it through 3 years. And this year I’ve rediscovered them. I’ve started doing things my way, with afternoon tea and wordcount horseraces. I ran an online bootcamp earlier in the year, and while it’s fair to say I’m still working out how to do those things with a better approach and not end up feeling like a schoolteacher, I have gained huge faith in the power of groups and accountability and am planning more things for next year.
Speaking of which, here’s the horserace. Mine is the rubbish one at the back because I was doing a lot of sorting and planning that day, but check out the Ostrich way over on the right! It feels as though a 5k wordcount challenge is a good thing to give people to aim for, and you can see a few grouped in that area. I just add the picture/race element because it’s funny. Not everyone thinks so, but that’s ok. Enough people join in for it to be cute and amusing.
And as for cake, oh, we had cake. The Bake-O-Matic went a bit retro and votes were pretty evenly split. So I went for a Victoria sponge cake and chocolate brownie bites. Then Elaine, a first-timer, bought us her pumpkin and raisin loaf, which was completely lovely and made me all warm and fuzzy. Oh, and they aren’t on this pic but I’d had a fit of enthusiasm and made mince pies. I know it’s a bit early, but I don’t do a retreat in December and I was determined to get past my terrible-pastry issues (since you ask, it was a bit meh on this batch but I’ve got it sorted since).
I also wanted to show you the gorgeous green wall that’s been growing outside The Cube for the last 6 months or so. This autumn has been so mild that it’s survived really well and I’m interested to see what it’s like when we come back in January.
So. That’s it. Another year over, for the physical retreats at least. But I do have exciting plans up my sleeve, including online writing retreats!
Like, srsly.
More on that to come.