Day 12

Day 12

I am acutely aware of the fact that I initially started out on this writing quest to mostly write fiction. Short stories and poems in particular, even though that's not explicitly what the brief says. I've always seen these as my weakness in writing, especially in building believable characters in short stories, ones with depth and humanity. So far though, I've written only one story with human characters, but they were based on myself. 

I think you can draw two equally valid conclusions from this trend. 'I am trying to avoid my weakest areas and stay in my comfort zone, thereby reducing the chances of improving, I should try to write a story or poem nearly every day'. You could also say 'I am finding and leaning into a writing style that I'm strongest at and will likely produce my best work in. By continuing to write in it, I will create more engaging content and become even stronger in my niche. I should write more monologue-style entries'. I'm just not sure which theory to buy into yet. 

As I said, the brief says that I can write absolutely anything that comes to mind on any given day, as long as I write something. I even deliberately avoided adding a minimum word cap, making it less intimidating for myself. So perhaps I'm fretting over a problem that doesn't really exist, or is at least completely created by my overthinking. Also, fiction seems to take more careful planning; the story comes out best if you know where you want to take it, and that requires having a strong idea. It just so happened that, on that day, I had an interesting (if quite disturbing) idea on my morning walk, so I ran with it. These ideas come rarely though, and most of these pieces have been thought up at my desk, trying to write. Even in this piece, I have no idea what the next sentence will be, what point I'm trying to make, or how I'll end this discussion. These are all barriers to writing a good story.

Perhaps this is also partly due to my faulty design of the challenge. I wrote that story on a day when I was a passenger in a car a lot, so writing on my phone was the only really productive thing I could do. It probably took me over 2 hours to write (which is probably a shocking amount of time), and that is time I cannot reasonably spare on most days. I shan't say 'I don't have time', because that's not true. However, it does reveal that I inherently have been believing that it's not worth it for me to spend 2 hours on one piece, when I could be doing laundry or building a business or anything else. That feels strange to have said aloud; is it not the whole purpose of this exercise to commit more and consistent time to improving my writing skills? I don't even know if half of this has been completely grammatically correct! By making it so I could write 'To be continued' or something on a day, then carrying the story over, it could allow me to do some real character development. ...

Wait, I've literally just thought of that and I COULD'VE BEEN DOING THAT THE WHOLE TIME?! *Sigh*. I don't think that would go against the spirit of the challenge, as long as I'm writing something and it's not just one sentence. If I write "Geoff paused the telly. To be continued", I think people would be rightly confused. I'll certainly ponder this new discovery for future posts, and try to give some thought to what I want to write before writing it. This could certainly encourage me to write more stories, the task does seem a little less daunting now. If the ideas aren't coming too often for stories, I should give more time to the ones that do come along. Simultaneously, I think that moving away from this format completely would stifle this challenge in the long run, variety is important in creativity. 

I don't intend to use this format again tomorrow, so I'll forewarn of this now. From day 14 to day 24, I'm not going to be on Itch.io. I will still be writing, one piece a day, I just won't be able to post them until I get back. Perhaps this will be a good opportunity to do some more long-form stuff.

(P.S: Proof-reading this and wow it's so jumbled. I think this is why I need some forward planning :)