I believed my maladaptive daydreaming in elementary school meant I would one day become a prolific fiction writer. Unfortunately, this was a difficult dream to keep up with. I tried my hand at writing books at recess on stapled line paper, then transcribing writing I deemed worthy onto Word documents. If you’re like me, what you’ve written is never as good as what you’ve daydreamt. You become a little horrified, a little disillusioned and far more realistic by the outcome.
In the early 2010s, social media inevitably bleeds into your life, and the books from your childhood that you couldn’t tear your eyes from take effort to love. In a way, they were right to warn you the world would end in 2012— in a way, it did. It becomes a distant memory, but weren’t the hours lost in a good book so much richer than hours scrolling through a tailored algorithm? You miss putting your daydreams to paper. When it didn’t feel like trudging a boulder up a hill, you were tobogganing down a mountain.
I’m not the same reader or writer I was when I was 12. My tastes have changed— I don’t necessarily want to complete the apocalypse series I’ve spent my tween years building. However, I still want to know if that love for creative writing I had is worth rekindling this year.
Writing Goals
My goals for 2022 are to write a short piece of flash fiction each day and submit to one literary publication or contest each month. I want, by the end of this year, to strengthen writing like a muscle. I hope that eventually, writing will just be something I do. I want to find a process, like a good workout, that consistently works.
To kick things off, I need accountability. I’m not typically the type of person to get something done unless I’m metaphorically handcuffed to an external expectation. To keep up with flash fiction, my friend and I decided to alternate sending each other writing prompts each day. This is surprisingly easy to keep up with. Flash fiction takes five to 10 minutes a day to write— I write most of it when I’m taking bathroom breaks. If I skip a day, it’s easy to catch up (on two bathroom breaks!). This exercise is a good way to develop your voice— it’s like a drop in your writing piggy bank each day.
The Writing Challenge
A week into the new year, another friend of mine organized a challenge to write a script or short story to share within a week before the start of school. I took this as a major sign to take writing seriously this year. To complete the challenge, I committed to writing for four hours (from 7-11 PM) each day. Here is how the week went down:
On the first day, I read short stories by other published authors within the genre I wanted to write in. I noted down what I liked or didn’t like, and what I could incorporate into my own writing. If reading something felt like a chore, I learned that it probably wouldn’t contribute to the story I’m trying to tell.
During the next few days, I let my words explode onto the first draft. I tried writing from prompts I made from the short stories I read, pooled relevant writing from old journal entries and pieces of flash fiction. I found myself really having to amp myself up to write— most of which consisted of silencing my inner critic. I kept reminding myself that the blank page was a safe place in which to grow.
As the days went on, my brain began to feel fried when I sat down to write. I beat around the bush far more often when the story came closer to fruition and wasn’t meeting my tastes. I realized I needed to take a step back.
Takeaways
- It was difficult to write on a time-based plan. I would write for three hours and find myself not knowing how to fill the rest of my time. In the future, I’ll try to write from daily goals instead.
- The writing process that currently works for me is: idea > research > structure > draft > form edits > sentence edits.
- I write best in short bursts from concise prompts.
- I found myself dissatisfied by the tone of my story, how the theme was conveyed and how the story was structured. In the future, I’ll figure these elements out before beginning a draft.
- I’ll also try to think of motifs to carry throughout the story to keep the theme cohesive.
- It’s important to take a day away from reading the draft before editing.
- It is feasible to write daily. I had extra time to write during winter break but I can still see myself devoting a bit of time each day during school.
- Writing advice can be overwhelming. It might be easier to focus on a single piece of advice until it’s internalized rather than multiple at once.
I hope this peek into my writing journey has been helpful. If you’ve made it this far, I’ll assume you’re a writer too. You spin silk from pain, mold clay from heartbreak. You stuff resentment into glass bottles and throw them far into the ocean. If you need it, I encourage you to take the plunge into refining your writing process, too. Keep learning about what doesn’t work to figure out what does. Loving the written word takes effort. I hope you find the poetry that makes it all worth it.