Scribbling to 1,000,000 revamp

 

This blog started off as a place for me to post a list of 100 simple goals to complete in 100 days. It motivated me quite a bit. But by doing this, I learn something important about myself: I suck at multitasking. Once I have a certain kind of goal, I get into and don’t want to do anything other than that goal (ex. Learning Korean)

 

So why not put this to good use?

It has been stated by several different well-known novelists that you have to write a lot of crap before the good stuff comes out. Some have even gone so far at to put a numerical value on how much crap you need to get out of your system: one million words.

This may seem like a lot. But if you do a bit of research, then you’d realize that the average novelist does this much writing every year. Some below this word count and some surpass it every month.

As an amateur storyteller, there is nothing more that I crave than to be able to write well. I can already write okayish. I have popped out a short story that received a smiley face drawn on the front page by my not so nice creative writing teacher.

But I suck at telling stories. Or at least I think so.

So, to improve my writing skills and my storytelling skills, I want to flush out the first million words. I also like the theme of setting a 100-day limit for my goals. This goal, however, will not quite have a 100 day lifespan because I start college August 20th (97 days from now) and move into my dorm on August 15th, five days prior (92 days from now).

Having a whole summer ahead of me that I tend to waste with daydreaming about doing cool self-improvement stuff, I want to spend it doing my daydreams from my high school years: To write A LOT. I’ve always looked at lists of 365 one word writing prompts and romanticized being able to have written/told that many stories. But I’ve never done it.

So starting today, my new goal is to write one million words before I enter college. Now, to reach this goal I will need to write around 10,900 words a day. Will I hit one million? Maybe not. But, considering that some people write more than one million words during NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month, meaning they hit >1 million words in 30 days when the event asks for just 50k) gives me a lot of hope and confidence.

Now, I’m not going to bs the word count and write stupid stuff just to write it. No. I’m going to try and write good stories that I would enjoy reading. Also, I can’t just write the entire time. I need to intake new stories and experiences. I want to be able to read at least as much as I write and force myself to watch a few episodes or more of some kind of film/tv show each week, versus bingeing on Youtube videos of people playing video games. I’m a total hermit during the summer, so I don’t get out much anyway. The most time spent away from home that may happen will be a few nights over my cousin’s house. But, I’m going to be moving into a dorm five days after I turn eighteen. So I think it’s okay to want to cherish the last summer of my childhood, having no responsibilities and being able to not have places to go and people to see.

 

Let’s move on now. So, how will I accomplish this goal? Going back to my love of 365 word prompts, I’m going to have a list of words as prompts, not a shocker, that I will write stories (or maybe poems, even though those aren’t the best for word count. But I want quality over quantity from my writing so word count isn’t the real goal) prompted from whatever stories the word inspires. But I won’t limit myself to that. If I have a story or poem or whatever idea pop into my head that I’d like to write that is not from a prompt, I’m still going to write it. The prompts will just act as a springboard if I need it.

Now the biggest thing that makes me shaky. Every word I write that is added to my goal, will be posted on this blog. Yes, every story or poem or whatever that I write until I go to college, will be public on this site. Posting my writing online isn’t a new concept for me. I do it all the time on Quotev, and will continue to do this, even with the works from this project. But it is a new concept for this platform.

So wish me luck on my fiction writing and storytelling goal. You will be seeing all of it here, and it will stay on here forever. Unless for some reason I want to get something published. Which, is not my end goal in any sense, but is possible.