25 Words a Day

I can't do all I would like to, but I can do SOME.

What’s the smallest unit of the creative thing you’re passionate about but can’t give the time or space it needs to flourish? 

Are you a painter or poet? Dream of turning a hobby into a side hustle? Long for something so outside your normal life you’re embarrassed to think of it in response to this question you’re reading silently on a screen? 

I'm here to make a small commitment to something large I want to do. Maybe you'll join me with a desire of your own. 

I want to write a novel. 

I started working on one while pregnant with my second child. Today, he’s four years old and I just had two more kids (hello, surprise twins). I also have a full time job outside the home … so go easy on me when I tell you, I’m still trying to finish it.

I’ve tried writing on my laptop in cafes (romantic), writing in journals with creamy paper (even more romantic), writing early in the morning (my kids always find me), writing every day in November (didn’t make it — hey Thanksgiving), writing one-handed on the subway (holding the pole with the other), writing on my phone in the dark while sitting on a child-sized foam rubber chair wedged next to a bunk bed while my older kids fall asleep (the most consistent writing time I've found). 

The first book I read about the craft of writing was Stephen King’s ubiquitous On Writing, where he shares that in his process he likes “to get ten pages a day, which amounts to 2,000 words.” 

With my love of rules and authority figures, I immediately took this as dogma and just as quickly found my own hopes of writing wither. I wasn't writing every day, and even on the days I did write, I wasn't getting close to the low end of his range. 

Then it got worse. Also from On Writing:

“The sort of strenuous reading and writing program I advocate—four to six hours a day, every day—will not seem strenuous if you really enjoy doing these things and have an aptitude for them; in fact, you may be following such a program already.”

Oh boy. 

The rhythms of my life didn’t align with any of this. That made me feel like a failure. As a lifelong athlete, I’m used to setting goals and meeting them. You commit and do the work or you don't. You make time or you don't. Stephen King reads books at Red Sox games. That's commitment. 

I couldn't put in four to six hours per day with the kind of parent, partner, and employee I needed and wanted to be. So, writing life over. 

But in parallel with the rough self talk was a quiet urge to try anyway. No one needed to know I was trying, so no one would know if I failed. Eventually I began. Not every day. Not even in consecutive weeks or months. 

Then another idea crossed my path. Since this time I've come to understand there a zillion ways to approach a craft, no one of them correct or perfect for everyone. But back then, this became the new plan.

I read Taffy Brodesser-Akner say she’d written Fleishman Is in Trouble in six months: 

“…it was a Word document that remained open in the background of my computer. It never got closed for six months. It would have taken ten years to write if I didn’t have children and it took six months to write because I don’t have time to be romantic about this. If this isn’t going to work out, I have to know now, because I’m stealing time and money from my family every sentence I give this.”

Never mind that I didn't realize six months was a stunning turnaround time for any novel, let alone a debut that was burning up the bestseller charts and dominating book conversations. I just knew I had kids and a job too, so hey. I opened a google doc and named it this in tribute: 

Then my doc sat blank for longer than six months. A span of time where apparently I could have written an entire novel and maybe edited it, too. Sigh. 

Taffy I was not. Stephen King I was not. But in my expanding studies of how others approached the craft, I was heartened by all the ways writers made their way to publication. There was no one way to be a novelist. One wrote in a minivan in a Wal-Mart parking lot where they could escape from their kids. 

So I kept on.

Sometimes I’m so close to my material I think it’s total trash and never going to work. Sometimes I’m so removed from it I read sentences I have no memory of writing and wonder what brilliant poet hacked into my google doc. Even if I don't succeed in making this book work, the work itself is enjoyable. I mean, when it isn't crippling me with doubt and despair. 

I’ve found my greatest writing streaks come when I’ve held myself accountable to someone else, namely two friends I met in a writing workshop right before the pandemic. Somewhere in the haze of 2020 we reconnected and shared pages, meeting monthly over Zoom to discuss our work. Then we got busy, as people do, and promised to keep writing and maybe start meeting again soon. You know how it goes.

A year went by and sometimes we wrote and sometimes we didn't and when someone finally popped up to say hello we discovered we were all pregnant at the same time, now living in three different states. That is to say, we were going to have even less time to honor the pull toward the creative. 

A new challenge began. How to make time for the thing whispering in the back of your mind when there are small people and jobs and partners and everything else demanding you in louder tones? 

Twenty-five words at a time. 

I asked them if we could commit to a daily writing goal so meager it would take more energy to explain why we missed it than to hit it. For an entire month we texted each other 25 words a day and here's the trick — once you write 25 words, which is roughly one sentence — you almost can't help but write more. 

I'm not talking about Ernest Hemingway and one true sentence. That bar is too high for me. Just one sentence, with no requirements that it be good. 

That's what I'd like to do here with you. 

I challenge myself to write 25 words of my someday novel each day until I finish it. I'll update you here on my progress every week. 

Photo by Zdeněk Macháček on Unsplash

Realistically, I’m not sure I'll be able to do it. I already have a mini family vacation planned and am still not sleeping through the night with the twins. But vigilance isn’t my point. Making space for something that feels good is my point. I do better work when I follow my excitement than when I use guilt and shame to drill myself into dust. Dust doesn’t complete many tasks. 

So will you join me? What’s the smallest unit of the creative thing you’re passionate about but can’t give the time or space it needs to flourish? We don't have time for the whole thing, but let's still do some. Come find your 25 words a day. 

See you next week. 

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