Since I’m just getting started with a steady, daily writing habit, I wanted to try something new. This is as good a time as any.
I want to write fictional stories.
Of course, as much as I also love audio, I want to publish my own storytelling podcast.
In fact, that’s what I did today to meet my 500-words goal.
I am not going to publish those 500+ words today, though. I want to keep working on them, editing them, and eventually let you read them at a later date. If you like where the story is going, then you could offer some feedback—in the form of kind words. This is new to me, so I’m only going to really appreciate encouraging words. 🙂
I say this is new, and I’m realizing it’s not completely true. As a kid, I wrote at least one fictional story in an English class. I don’t even remember what grade I was in, but part of our assignment was to tell a story.
I do remember it was an adventure story told in the style of my favorite books that the time: Alfred Hitchcock and the Three Investigators.
I had discovered the series in our school library started reading all I could.
So since those stories were filling up my head at the time, I had to write a story like that when we got the fiction writing assignment.
I didn’t do a lot of writing after that. During the 1990s, I’d occasionally attempt poetry and also jot detailed ideas for stories I’d like to tell one day.
That was more than twenty years ago, and the idea of writing fiction hasn’t left me. So it’s time I give it another try.
That’s one thing that’s been great about this writing challenge. 500 words a day is not difficult, but it does require commitment. And in order for it do any good, it’s got to be consistent over time.
The writing challenge is just for one month. But the idea is to push yourself to make this a daily habit after the 30 (or 31) days.
Doing the math was also motivating. 500 words a day times 30 days is 15,000 words. That’s significant results for somewhat little daily effort.
Wow. And after a year of writing 500 words a day, that’s 182,500 words. Surely there would be something worth publishing out of nearly 200,000 words. 🙂
Well, no matter what happens, this exercise is certainly strengthening my writing abilities. That’s important to me.
When you think about all the jobs that will disappear or change significantly within the next decade as automation, A.I., and even robots start doing those jobs more efficiently and more cheaply, the kind of work we will find to do will be vastly different than the work my grandparents did after World War II.
Communication will still be important, however. How we communicate will change. It already has. But communication itself will still be a valuable skill.
Writing is a critical part of communication. Writing gives you the opportunity to say what you want to say, edit what you said, and publish it in a way that connects with people in more effective ways.
That writing might end up as words on a screen, a voice in a podcast, or a person (or cartoon!) on video. It might be non-fiction or fiction.
But the core will be an act of communication, something that started with writing.
Something that started by simply writing at least 500 words each day.
