Once, when I was 11 years old, I won NaNoWriMo on my first attempt. This was, of course, the Young Writer’s Program, so my word count goal was something like 9,000 words or so. And yet, it’s one of my proudest accomplishments. I mean, I can check “write a book” off my bucketlist, even if it was a tiny thing full of an 11-year-old girl’s cliches. (I’m not even sure I have that file anymore, but I can tell you it was terrible writing.)
And yet, I hardly remember that part of it. Whether or not it sucked doesn’t matter, because hey. I wrote a book.
Why, as adults, don’t we think of writing in this same way?
It’s an easy question to ask because we all know the answer–the adult mind is good at filtering what it comes up with. Great, even. We are our own worst critic, as the saying goes. We have a lot more experience with what is considered beautiful writing, and we also have a lot more experience with what people have to say about writing. We know what, subjectively, sucks and what’s considered some of the best writing of all time.
All of that to say, I used to love writing. I definitely forget that I used to love writing, but based on the evidence, I must have.
I wrote daily diary entries starting when I was 6 years old, and for a good amount of time after, probably up to 8 or so. Around that same time, I wrote stacks and stacks of “newsletters”, which began as a piece of paper printed off our computer at 5 years old and morphed into this weird, cringy emailed newsletter all about myself that I forced onto my friends at 12.
Forums were also a huge part of my life around age 13 or 14, and I played pretend on Harry Potter forums and wrote extensive amounts of roleplays, which was one of the most enjoyable experiences of collaborative creativity I’ve ever remembered experiencing. Whatever form it took, it’s obvious that I loved writing and that I loved sharing my writing with other people.
So what happened?
I could say that life got in the way, which wouldn’t entirely be a lie, but it also wouldn’t 100% be the truth. I think what really got in the way was myself.
I took an English class this past semester, probably the first real English class I’ve ever taken besides what my mom taught me, and I absolutely loved it. In fact, I surprised myself with the impact that it had on me. Not only was it a great excuse to squeeze another favorite past-time of mine, reading, into the busyness of the school semester, but it introduced me to so many new genres and styles of writing that I never would have tried out on my own.
Throughout the entire semester, the professor would describe writing as a powerful tool to say whatever you want need to say. I mean, he would really emphasize this, over and over, like pulling examples from our readings of characters who used art to communicate whatever powerful idea or perspective they had about their world. It’s important to preface what I am about to say with how highly he regarded the act of writing, because it really makes this statement hit home…
During one of the last few class sessions, in his professorial epilogue, he described writing as a muscle that you have to exercise regularly. He said he hoped that we would continue reading and writing and exploring the world through different sets of eyes, but to do so, we’d have to work at maintaining and building up our tool of writing. I had never really thought of it that way, at least not from the mouth of someone who is supposed to be good at writing already. But I took this to heart, and began setting myself a daily goal to try writing something every day.
For the first few days, this consisted of a paragraph or two about simply what I did that day, just a glorified list of items, and that was it. Obviously, I was a little bit annoyed with myself, that I couldn’t come up with anything better, but I persisted, just to see what could come out of it. Soon, I stumbled upon another NaNoWriMo program, where they were promoting May as Short Story Month. I then decided that I would set myself a (small) word count goal for May; I would try and write 10,000 words worth of short stories, which amounts to about 10 short stories in one month.
The good thing about short stories is that if they start to suck, I can just end it and start over with a completely different idea, and it wouldn’t be a waste of my time. I also need to practice writing not only endings, but stories in their compact, tighter form. As a film major with an interest in screenwriting, I feel that improving at writing short stories could help me improve at writing short films as well. (So far, I’ve written 2 short stories, which aren’t half bad.)
I’ve been switching between writing blog-post-format chunks of thought and the more creative style of a short story every other day. With this system, I’ve kept up my goal of writing every day, at least for the past 2 weeks or so.
I’m currently working my way up to publishing what I work on daily online instead of keeping it to myself, and hopefully this will push me out of my comfort zone just enough to help me learn more and more about myself each day.
I am very quickly learning that what my professor said was true; writing is definitely a muscle that you have to exercise, and I can already see my improvement in both the way I write, but also the way I think and process the world around me. I have to say that it was pretty difficult starting out, but it’s getting easier every day. ∇
hello, it's abby. 