What I ACTUALLY Learned From Writing Every Day for a Month

People always say that the key to being a successful writer is to not just write, but to write every day. 

But what would I manage to learn from that?

Back when I was younger, I could write all day, every day. I’m not really sure how I had the focus or the energy back then, but writing every day was a breeze when I first started writing.

At some point, though, that became a lot more difficult. Gone were the days where I could just write without thought. Gone were the days where I didn’t struggle with fatigue all the time.

If I wanted to reclaim the joy of writing every day, I had to give a concentrated effort to do so.

So, when I heard of the DraftDash event happening in January on Tumblr, I decided to give it a try. After all, with Ghosts of the Steel Road in deeper edit stages, I needed a new first draft to work on.

In a happy turn of events, I managed to complete the event, writing at least fifteen minutes each day! In total, I wrote over 16,000 words of my first draft for my dystopian WIP, Petal, Pedal.

Here were some things that I learned in the process:

My drafting process isn’t the same as everyone else’s, and that’s okay

All the time, I see posts of people’s writing on social media, and while I don’t usually compare myself and my writing to them, my imposter syndrome always flares up when I see just how good some people’s first drafts seem to be. Even while figuring out their story, they still manage to make such beautiful descriptions, such vivid prose.

It’s easy to beat myself up about it, but after getting through 16,000 words of Petal, Pedal, I’ve accepted I can’t ever expect my first draft to be like that. For me, I still have to explore my worlds during my first draft, letting the worldbuilding and my characters weave themselves into my plot. Even when I’ve tried to outline, there’s always more which blooms whenever I actually put the words down for the first time, uncovering layers I never thought possible.

Will those first drafts ever have lines which would end up on an aesthetic Pinterest quotes page? Absolutely not. But my first draft is still building my story together, in a way which works best for me.

I’m (unfortunately) becoming a night writer

Looking at the ethereal morning bird, who loves to go to bed before 10pm and wake up when the sun rises (if not before). One may wonder, if that lovely morning bird were to be a writer, wouldn’t they just love to spend those early mornings putting their ideas down to paper?

Well, I swear I used to be that way. But despite still being early-to-rise, early-to-bed, most of the month I found myself getting my words in at 9 or 10 at night. 

Why, exactly? I’m not quite sure, other than the usual being fatigued during much of the day in the winter, but my creative energy just keeps sparking right before I have to head to bed. Great for being able to write without overthinking, not-so-great for wanting to write for multiple projects in the same day (sorry, fanfiction I just started to continue at the beginning of January).

I’m hoping that this will work itself out eventually, but if not, I’ll just have to learn to adapt to my new writing ways (maybe with some late afternoon naps).

I still know how to write

It may be silly to talk about feeling like I no longer know how to write while prepping a novel for self-publishing, but it’s true. Ghosts of the Steel Road is really the only novel draft I’ve ever finished, and with each draft attempt I scrapped since, it was easy to wonder whether I would ever be able to write another novel at all.

But, I’m realizing I might still be a good writer.

It’s difficult to explain, but even though my first drafts definitely read like first drafts, I still have the ability to craft worlds. I still have it within me to craft a narrative, the kind of narrative that only I can write.

Now, I’m not necessarily a believer in the “writers must write every day” rule. But, I think I may continue to try, if only because I have so many projects I want to work on right now. DraftDash will be doing challenges other months, anyway, and it’ll be fun to see how high my word count can get this year.

Whatever happens, though, I’ll have more words on the page than I did at the beginning of this year.