Wrap Up: 200 Words a Day Challenge
Wrap Up: 200 Words a Day Challenge
Some surprising lessons, and also some big plans!
Hey y’all, it’s KimBoo! I’m an author who is also librarian, text technology historian, and former I.T. project manager. I write about a lot of interesting things, I hope you agree! Please consider supporting me (and my dog!) so I can keep throwing errata & etcetera into the Scriptorium!
You know what they say about challenges: dare not others, for that they may dare unto you.
I mean, I’ve never heard that saying before, I just made it up, but it SHOULD be a saying.
Which is to say: I challenged my friend
to not only write 200 words a day (something she does often anyway) but post 200 words a day. In public. For all to see! She had been faffing about too long in starting her subscription writing platforms (in my very not-humble opinion) and so I threw down the gauntlet.Which she threw right back in my face!
What are friends for, amirite??!??!?
While posting publicly is hardly an issue for me, as I’m more of a “throw it out the door like dirty dishwater” type of writer, she called me on the carpet specifically to write 200 words a day on a new piece of fiction.
HOW DARE!!!!!! 😤
See, for the past year or so, I’ve talked a lot about writing, but mostly worked on doing a lot re-writing (Dragon’s Grail) and editing (The Queen’s Aerie). Nothing fresh, as it were.
Meanwhile, I actually thought up the bones of the idea for Transmigrated Teri in 2021, I think. I talked about it, created a Scrivener project for it, furiously scribbled out notes in random notebooks, dictated some rough ideas for scenes…but actually write it? Nope, no siree, not even a little bit.
I was stuck in a loop of insecurity and ambivalence. Was the idea too much of a “mary sue”? Is it too cheesy? Am I a good enough author to pull it off?
Gina was the witness for all of this and constantly yet gently kept reminding me that the story remained unwritten. She often reiterated the not-quite-a-momminder that she was really excited to read it! Someday! Eventually!
To be fair that was also my approach to getting her to post more of her writing, so it was a standoff.
One that was broken starting July 1st.
She began her 31 days of prompts and prose, while I dived in with the opening scene to Teri Graves’ story.
Meet Teri Graves
Let me tell you, it’s a bit of a trip to open your story with the first day of the pandemic lock-down in 2020, which also happens to be the main character’s last day alive.
Yes, she “wakes up” in a fantasy world, but even so, it’s a grim way to launch. Especially since Teri herself is not very likable. I tried to make her sympathetic (broken dreams, abusive father, caretaker for her dementia-addled mother) but she’s a middle aged, bitter office lady who can and does pull out her White Lady Karen routine when she wants to speak to the manager.
Yet, I love her, and I love the set up. The more I lean into her experience as a fangirl the more I’m enjoying writing it, because I am familiar with the kind of fan that Teri represents.
They are the ones who are obsessed with canon and are often found doing a lot of grunt work like building wikis and archives and helping to moderate forums and events. They are the backbones of their chosen fandom and yet, sadly, just aren’t very likable themselves. Everyone appreciates them and gives them shout outs, but their friends roster changes often. If they are lucky, they never stick their foot too far into fandom wank and end up ostracized because no one wants to defend them. The sad truth is that their fandom is their entire world and not in a good way, because they are so profoundly unhappy in their own lives. Teri is the acme personification of a person who got stuck in that role for twenty years as her fandom rose and fell and rose again around her.
Despite her unhappy life, Teri did not want to die — after all, she was still waiting on Fuckin’ Chad to write and publish the final book in the Allisar Fireborn Chronicles series!
…which means that despite the fact that she memorized the books and wrote about them and analyzed them extensively, there might be some facts she just doesn’t know yet.
Yet. *evil author laughter*
Takeaways From the Challenge
The most important takeaway is the reminder that I love writing, and I love writing by the seat of my pants. I love sitting down every day and finding out what happens next! I plan to keep doing that, and while I do have my serial beats system on hand to help guide me forward, I’m embracing my own discovery method whole heartedly!
With that in mind, one thing I discovered that really, really worked for me is setting an interim word count goal instead of an total word count goal.
I write in Scrivener, and it has a function where you can set word count goals, both daily and total. For the total, I set a total word count goal of 6k words (which I changed to 8k words about halfway through July) and set the deadline for July 31st. It was really inspiring me to see how the numbers went up every day! A big change from putting a huge number in the total field and feeling insignificant every time I wrote a mere 200 words towards the goal.
So I’ll be doing the same for August by upping the “total” word count for the project to 16k with a deadline of August 31st. So far I’m loving it, and if it keeps me engaged like this, will just keep changing it every month until the story is done.
Since I don’t really know how long the serial will be anyway (remember: I’m a died-in-the-wool pantser) this works really well for me. Part of me wishes I had thought of this earlier in my career, but on the other hand, I had previously focused on writing novels and mistakenly trying to conform to outlines and strict word count goals. I guess we learn what we need to learn when we need it!
Path Forward
I will not be posting snippets of Transmigrated Teri every day anymore, which might make you super happy or might not! But I will still be writing it every day. I love the story as much as I thought I would and am looking forward to continuing it!
I will also be moving it over to my Ream platform, where I will post scenes as I finish them. Really rough WIP work, but for those who like the story, you can join me there to stay in the loop.
Eventually, I will post scenes for free here on Substack again, but that probably won’t happen until at least October, maybe later. We’ll see how it goes!