Juiced On Writing

Fear of Writing author, Milli Thornton, hosts a monthly challenge on her blog for writers to join in and write 10,000 words in a day. The next day is – today! Thursday, July 16th. And there are a few who have joined up or RSVPed on the blog to suggest they will be writing in this challenge.

Although Milli hosts this challenge, and you will find some material supporting it from the sidebar of the Fear of Writing blog, the 10K Day concept has been based on the material from author JR Turner. I am linking to Jennifer Turner’s webpage discussing 10K Day also at the bottom of this post.

Here are the 10K Day for Writers Rules (available on the Fear of Writing Blog, where you can sign up and comment about progress).

Mission statement:
The purpose of a 10K Day is to try to write 10,000 words. The spirit of a 10K Day is to liberate myself and celebrate my creativity.

THIS DAY IS for you, so do what works for you. But these are the rules that have proven to produce the best results:

1. No editing or rewriting.
2. No looking back over what you’ve written during the 10K Day.
3. No rummaging—either in notebooks or in your computer files—for writing you did some other time.
4. No research. Make it up.
5. Don’t fuss about the rules of writing. Just write.
6. Don’t fuss with structure. You can format, add chapter headings (or whatever) some other time.
7. No struggling. (“Allow yourself to be crappy.” — J.R. Turner)
8. Take a 15-minute break every two hours. Use this break to refresh your body, brain and spirit.
9. Report to your writing companions during your break. These “check-ins” should be kept brief.
10. No agonizing over your word count. Yes, the goal is 10,000 words, but not at the cost of your peace of mind. This is not a competition—not even with yourself! Have fun instead.
Adapted from 10K in a Day by J.R. Turner

Can You Do 10K in a Day?

Yes, I can. But can you? My statistics on two novel projects prove this. Sometimes I can manage up to 12,000K+ on a day, also. Sometimes I can only manage 2K, and that was at a push. It depends where my storyline has gone, and on many more factors.

This July, I am not at that point in a writing project where I am ready to write 10k today, so I won’t be taking the challenge personally. However, I would suggest that there are multiple benefits to my own writing that I have noticed when I do manage this: -

• It’s writing practice, so any of that is a good thing.
• The urgency to just get out that many words means that your self-critique inside gives up the ghost shortly into the day (or lunchtime, if you’re a daylight writer like myself), and just lets you go with the flow.
• Challenges like these (NaNoWriMo is another one) provide a community to both support and witness your public success or otherwise. That kind of public peer pressure does wonders for motivation.

LinkMes:

• 10K for Writers Rules – rules as quoted above, from the Fear of Writing blog.
• 10K for Writers check-in page for today’s event.
• 10K in a Day by Jennifer Turner – the principles are discussed here

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