What 50 Words a Day Did for Me

I started writing about five years ago (has it really been that long?). I had always told myself stories, especially as I was trying to sleep, but I never wrote anything down. I don’t know why. I just didn’t. I certainly rewrote in my head the novels that I didn’t like, the movies that went the wrong way, and created new lives for characters I wanted to know more about.

But I never wrote anything down. I was married to a writer; I wasn’t. So I didn’t write on paper a single word of the novels I dictated to myself or anything about the worlds I created. Nothing. Nada. Zilch.

[He, by the way, never once told me I wasn’t a writer. He didn’t know I told myself stories.]

It’s irritating now to look back on all those years of not writing anything down. If I had, I could imagine writing this from my luxurious, warm beach house in Kauai, instead of my little desk in the coldest corner of my living room in my 64-degree house. Fingerless gloves help, as do my secondhand Jack Skellington wristies, but not enough. I’ve lived in Hawai’i and no matter how carefully I decorated my house in central Pennsylvania to resemble a tropical paradise, it’s not Hawai’i.

But there’s no point in regretting the past. We can only start where we are.

Where I started was when my sister sent me a secondhand laptop. Since the kids were mostly grown, and I had time during the day when my husband was writing, I gradually started writing. I wrote blogposts for my husband’s website that became my first nonfiction book: Suburban Stockade. He needed content and we were living the lifestyle so I wrote them. I wrote blogposts that described my discovery and development of a new kind of quilt (NotQuilts). Those posts will also be turned into a book. I’ve since written plenty of other stuff as well. Nonfiction is easy.

While I was doing this, I also started writing fiction. I wrote in fits and starts, as the muse dictated, as I had the time and the inclination. I didn’t finish anything but I sure wrote a lot of words. Over the last few years, I must have written a million or more words; developing a few worlds, stories set in those worlds, vignettes and scenes and snippets and bits and pieces.

There was only one problem: I didn’t finish anything.

I was extremely inconsistent in how I wrote. I would write a paragraph or two, or I’d write a few thousand words or something in between. I’d take days off, that turned into weeks while I waited for inspiration to appear.

Let me tell you, the muse didn’t arrive promptly at my house every day at 10 a.m. I wrote like a terrier in a field full of mice and rabbits and tall grass. I was constantly distracted, constantly going off on a tangent, and constantly starting something new! exciting! distracting! unconnected to anything else!

I have to look upon all those words as practice. All those practice fictional words also taught me that nonfiction was much, much easier for me to write. I can churn out a few thousand words on keeping water out of your basement in a flash.

I got into the very bad writing habit of being inconsistent. I took a few online writing courses which did help. They would have helped more if I hadn’t used them as an excuse to avoid the tedious work of writing my own fiction. Did you know you can teach yourself the habit of never finishing what you started? It’s true. You can.

Joining CPRW

Then I joined the Central Pennsylvania Romance Writers. Soon after I joined, the group ran its “fifty words a day for fifty days” competition. Fifty words a day? I can do fifty words. I did not join the contest, but I decided to act as if I had. Gradually, very gradually, I started writing a bit every day, except on Sunday. Fifty words a day became my goal to shoot for. If I made my goal, I tried to keep writing.

I started to write more.

More than that, I started writing consistently. This was a huge step for me. I started trying to finish what I had already started instead of going down yet another rabbit hole.

Here’s another thing I learned: The belief pushed by some self-helpers that you can learn a new habit in 21 days? I can’t. I need weeks and weeks of steady, regular practice before a habit can set itself. Even then, I still have to remind myself to do it.

On the other hand, bad habits like eating all the ice cream or playing solitaire for hours on end are easy habits to learn because they’re fun and involve zero self-discipline. I can learn a bad habit in about an hour.

But after awhile, I began to accept that those 50 days were a good, solid start to writing every day, whether I felt like it or not.

Stacking Goals

Once I was fairly consistent at fifty words, I set a secondary goal of writing 385 words per day. Hitting this mark for 26 days (every day of the month except Sunday) equals 10,000 words. Ten thousand words a month equals 120,000 words in a year. That’s a large novel, two shorter novels or a whole lot of short stories.

I chose to only count “new” words, no editing or rewriting of any kind. My fifty words have to be new, a continuation of what I am already working on. Otherwise, I can endlessly rewrite a passage and never make any forward progress. Refusing to count “edited” words forces me to add new ones and get closer to “the end.”

For the same reason, I chose to not count any nonfiction or blogpost words. I can write plenty on soil management or constructing Roman shades, but that doesn’t get the novel finished. I’m not counting this post towards my word count for the day. If I did, I wouldn’t add more words to The White Elephant of Panschin. I would count my day as done and it’s not.

I do not count exactly. I always round down. If I write 59 words, I count it as 50. As with budgeting, I overestimate my costs and underestimate my income to arrive at a happy ending. With writing, I underestimate how much I write and overestimate how much I need. Then, at the end, I’ve got plenty of words to work with. It’s easier for me to tighten than it is to add.

Eventually, another “fifty words a day for fifty days” challenge appeared on the CPRW calendar. Again, I did not officially participate. But I wrote my words as if I did. I rarely wrote less than 385 words a day, other than on Sunday.

I’m now working towards a new goal: 1,000 words a day. 1,000 words a day for a year (skipping Sundays) is 313,000 words. That’s three novels! I rarely make this goal but I do usually get 500, 600, even 800 words so I’m getting closer. The key, as always, is consistency.

It’s all very well to write 1,000 words here and there and nothing in between. But those random words don’t necessarily add up to a finished piece of writing. Fifty words a day, every single day, will add up to a finished piece of writing. Fifty words a day is such a small amount, yet if you are consistent, you’ll end up with more words than if you wrote only as the muse appeared.

The muse still doesn’t show up at my house at 10am sharp. Sometimes she shows up, but more often, she doesn’t. Interestingly, when I go back and reread what I wrote, I can’t tell which days she appeared. My words all blend together, equally smooth and inspired.

As a direct result of “fifty words,” I finished and self-published my first novel. I’m plowing ahead steadily on my second novel. After it is finished, I have notes on the third one in the series. “Fifty words” is helping me to go back to my million or so words of glurge and world building and convert them into finished writing.

I’ve been a member of CPRW for about a year now. The “fifty words a day for fifty days” challenge is coming up again. This year, I will participate officially and submit my word count. If you don’t participate in “fifty words” officially, you may still want to participate on your own. “Fifty words” helped me to be more consistent and productive. It can help you too.