100 Days of Writing

Hi friends!

My brain has been spinning these past few weeks, thinking about our 100KQ4 Challenge of last year and also the craze of 75 Hard/Medium/Soft that took over our writer spaces.

Was I a guilty party in helping spread the craze? Of course. But it took me less than a week to realize that any iteration of the 75 Hard wouldn't work for me, despite desperately wanting it to.

I knew this the first time I attempted Jenna's version of the challenge for a single day, but even as I tweaked it to better fit my own goals, I came to the same conclusion: I can't change my life this way. I can't jump in, all-or-nothing, with a completely new schedule and system, despite finding it SO motivating to watch others do so.

But those goals, and those system changes, all the desires are still there. Lindsay Puckett made a shared 75 Medium Google Doc that some of our retreat girlies contributed to, all of us listing out our goals for the tweaked challenge.

Mine looked like this:

I still want to make a lot of these a regular thing. I still want to increase my fruit/vegetable intake, I still want to make sure I'm moving my body, I still want to add in daily stretching and industry reading.

In fact! The only one I made substantial headway in was "Get dressed (in not last night's pajamas) M-F."

I told myself it was the ONLY goal I had to do for the week. The only new challenge I had to take on. Everything else could stay the same, but I just needed to get dressed in the morning before I sat at my desk.

Now as all of this is spinning in my brain, I was scrolling through the Nerdfighters subreddit and someone mentioned the classic 100 Days challenge. Eight years ago, John Green and his friend decided to change their lives in 100 days and made an entire separate channel chronicling the journey. I so enjoyed watching those videos at the time and the 100 Days channel is still one I return to for motivation.

And wouldn't you know it, September 23rd is 100 days before 2026.

So with all this swirling in my head, I got to brainstorming how I could make a version of "changing my life" work for me. Here's what I've come up with:

Starting September 23rd, I'm going to draft 500 words per day until the end of the year. I'm also going to stretch for 5 minutes every day until 2026.

(Putting all my focus into revising THANKS FOR WATCHING has taught me that I really love the creative outlet of drafting. I've missed it the past few weeks. So I want to make it a daily habit to draft 500 words every day, regardless of the rest of the work I have. And 500 feels very doable to me. I'm not going to put any constraints on WHAT I'm drafting. It could be a blog post, it can be a short story, it could in a separate novel-length WIP, it doesn't matter. Just 500 words.)

And then, every ten days, I'll add another new habit/goal to the list.

So Days 11-20, I'll be drafting 500 words, stretching for 5 minutes, and reading one chapter of any book EVERY DAY. Then, Days 21 - 30, I'll also make sure to get at least 2 fruits and vegetables in every day as well.

Not only am I hoping that incrementally, over the course of the 100 days, this will work, but also the increments ARE small. You can see I even scaled it down from my original goals during Lindsay's version of the challenge. (5 minutes of stretching vs. 10, 2 fruits/veg vs. 3, etc.)

Obviously MORE time stretching and MORE fruits and vegetables in my diet would be better, but I just want a step in the right direction, you know?

Also, if you can't read my handwriting, my other goals are: journaling each day, tidying my work space for 5 minutes each day, getting my heart rate up for 20 minutes ("can be just a walk"), doing my daily skincare in the mornings with spf, doing skincare at night an hour before I go to bed, recommending something (a book, a show, an article) to someone each day, cook/bake one new-to-me dish.

I made the 11th goal the hardest one (or hardest for me, lol), because that way it's a "final push" of the 100 days. Also, at this point, hopefully goals 1-7 are basically habit!

Big goals and challenges like this are ALWAYS more fun when participating together, so I've made another TrackBear for us to follow along with! This time, for our 100 Days of Writing, I've set it to allow tracking of whatever you want! For the word count goal, I did the 500 words (my goal) * 100 days, but obviously you are WELCOME to shoot over that or make your own personal goal be 25,000 or do a combination of words and pages and chapters and scenes and lines. Whatever works for you! :)

Here is the direct join link if you want to be part of the TrackBear group!

Please let me know if you have any thoughts on how other items should be tracked (lines/scenes/pages??) and I can configure those, too. :)

ALSO! Let me know if this sort of "stair step" method for adding new goals resonates with you. And if you plan on adding any additional, non-writing related goal to your 100 Days, I'd LOVE to hear it.

Okay, finally, I do want to share one other "challenge" I'll be participating in, which is the Halloween-a-thon!

My friend Jess at The Hexed Library told me about it. She's currently hosting the Summer Scare Readathon happening THIS WEEK, which I'm so enjoying. If you didn't see my Instagram, I'm making a little glow-in-the-dark ghost army. Here's one sitting atop my TBR stack for the readathon:

Halloween-a-thon is like a reading challenge, moviethon, activity extravaganza! There's bingo boards, game boards, tons of suggestions, and a full Halloween-a-thon town map. It starts September 22nd (the first day of Fall and one day before our challenge!) and lasts until Halloween, October 31st.

It's even inspired me to come up with my own To Be Read, To Be Watched, To Be Made, To Be Done activities and suggestions list. I'm ready for something fall, spooky, silly, fun EVERY day:

I'm sure there are SO MANY MORE. And again, tons of recommendations from the "mayors" and "legends" of Halloween-a-thon. But if you have any recipes or patterns or movies or short stories you'd like to recommend, I would LOVE to add them to my list. :)

Finally, I want to thank you all SO MUCH for your feedback on our cover concepts. Y'all will, of course, be the first to see it, and I'll try to do a breakdown sharing the tweaks we made along the way. :) :) :)

There's construction happening in our neighborhood, so if you've been on the Twitch streams, you know my internet has been hit or miss recently. They should be finishing up on the roads to the side and in front of our house in a few days, so I'll hopefully be able to schedule our Double Stream Days for the end of this week.

Thank you all so much and happy writing! :)