diamonds from ash

on november 26, 2024 i challenged myself with a simple goal: write at least a thousand words every day, and see how long you can stay consistent.

on march 5, 2025 i reached the 100th consecutive day and called it quits, because i’d learned what i needed to by that point, and it was becoming a problem.

i intended to write this post earlier, but to be honest i needed some recovery time. i’ve had that now, so it’s time to get this done, as much for my own sake as for anyone else reading. let’s go.

ever since i started writing again my main hammer has been consistency. gotta stay consistent. gotta make time for the important things. and writing is maybe the most important thing to me; it gives me a reason to get out of bed, to engage my mind, to fuel my body. to do everything else i need to do in order to sit down and write. so: writing, and clearing obstacles to writing.

to help myself stay consistent i started a story that i’d been thinking about for a while, called Fallen For Her, and began posting chapters on a twice weekly schedule. apart from the first couple which are shorter, all of them clock in somewhere around 2100 words each, so an output of around 4-4.2k words written every week. which, especially if you’re out of practice – as i was – is a lot. so i started by getting a few chapters done before i posted the first one, which was an excellent idea.

(brief aside: if you want to read FFH, and i hope you do, it was originally on scribblehub and eventually mirrored on ao3, both of which will be updated at the same time until the story ends.)

i found it very important to have a buffer of material to post. not that i’ve had to use it [yet], but that it provided peace of mind that if anything did happen, i had plenty of material (a week, minimum, is what i started with; it later expanded to two and a half at its peak) and i wouldn’t run out, fail to post on schedule, and have people lose interest if my immediate output dropped off for whatever reason. sickness, ennui, anything. a buffer gives breathing room and lets you make better choices about what you’re doing, better editing and planning. this of course only applies if you have some sort of timeline; but if you think about it, everything is on a timeline! sometimes you just don’t see them until they happen to you.

speaking of planning. yikes. quantity does not immediately impart quality and i learned that the hard way. the first part of FFH meanders pretty lazily and i think suffers for it – though there are a lot of good characterization moments in there that pop up later, so it’s not wasted per se. but the important thing is to actually have a plan when writing, which i learned from an interview of one of my favorite mechsploitation writers (which you can read for yourself if you like; i’d recommend it). knowing where you’re going provides a much more satisfying product than just writing words to write words. i didn’t count any of the planning material toward my word total for the day, but perhaps i should have; it’s absolutely vital stuff and should be respected appropriately.

as far as what counted toward that daily 1k: poetry and prose, really nothing else. and not much of the former; i don’t write all that much poetry, now that i find prose coming easier to me, because the prose is a lot more satisfying. i can offer a much more coherent world through that medium than through poetry, which isn’t to say it can’t be done or that there aren’t worlds that are even better suited to poetry – there undoubtedly are – but none of my own presently are, that’s all. so: just the product. not any of the pages and pages of discussion, of worldbuilding, of eventual planning documents and backstory, none of that counted. only what actually got – or would get – posted or published. and partially that’s because i was driving toward that 4.2k weekly ‘requirement’, and partially because of awful brain wiring regarding what is good or appropriate or satisfactory.

so why’d i stop? what was the problem, if i hit 100 consecutive days?

well, i have to do other stuff like clean the house and take care of myself and get groceries and make actual progress on life in other fields. as much of a personal drive as writing is, as wonderful a thing as it is, it absolutely consumed me to hit this self-imposed milestone. all my thoughts inclined toward hitting that goal. if my mood didn’t work for FFH i’d cast about for some other story that i could pour it into; i even made a few new ones where i could put the words that didn’t fit. i probably hit closer to 110-120k total words because i rarely stopped close to 1k and often went to 2k and beyond if inspiration took me on a flight. but that comes at a cost of time and energy that i need to use for other things if i want my life situation to get any better than it is at present.

it would be different if i had a partner to take care of some of the stuff, but i don’t. i live alone and have done so for a very long time, longer than i like to think about. so at some point i have to put down the pen and pick up the skillet, or the bottle of window cleaner, or the vacuum, or the gardening shears, or whatever else needs doing. so i’m doing more of that these days.

but as a dear friend told me:

“that’s an amazing accomplishment
I know it sucked sometimes but you did it, and nothing can ever take it away from you”

and really, that’s all i can ask for. a feather in my metaphorical cap, and a lot of lessons learned to take with me as i keep doing the thing i love the most.