I am up early because my brain is all over the place, but MILWORDY is at the top.
MILWORDY is writing a million words in a year. So starting Sept 1st, 2020 and extending to Aug 31, 2021, you would write million words.
Am I the only one who got the Austin Power’s Dr Evil’s face?
I guess it started with Nano and there are a bunch of people doing it.
There’s no formal sign-up. You can choose your actual goal and what words count.
Ohh I love Kate Cavanaugh‘s spreadsheet!
What do you think? Anyone else interested?
Why on earth would someone do this? Just to say “Lookit, ma, I wrote a million words?”
Now write a million stories, maybe. Heck, even a thousand stories. I would do that challenge with someone, I think, no bagels required.
But a million words is just an activity, and seems merely a way to kill time for those who like it better dead.
I get what you are saying. For me its setting up a goal and having comradery on it. There was also a thing awhile back, I would have to find the reference, that said a million words is what it takes for you to get great at writing. What I would love to do is write a million words of fiction. Can I do that at this point? Meh, maybe. If I add blog posts I get a tiny bit closer. Though you do have an interesting point about the thousand stories. I once did a story a day challenge for a month. I had 26 stories for the month. Hmmm. Let’s talk about the 1000 stories. How would that work? 🙂
Interesting and your comment clarified something for me – assume Gladwell is right and it takes 10,000 repetitions to become a master.
Well, 10,000 repetitions of what? Writing out words 100 at a time? Or is a writer more about crafting stories and what you want to be a master of in the end is what you want to repeat, over and over until you are unconsciously skilled, is telling a story.
From Hemingway’s “For sale: one pair baby shoes, never worn.” to Waiting for Godot to David Foster Wallace, writing all kinds of stories is what a writer wants to become great at. Or maybe 10,000 scenes, or 10,000 lines of dialogue. But 100-word strings doesn’t seem like something it would be useful to practice 10,000 times (unless you are seeking mastery at writing prose 100 words at a time).
365 days in a year minus holidays and what not is about 3 stories per day. Any length, any format, any timeframe, a continuing story, independent, whate. Is this a story? if you think it is, then it is.
Maybe 1000 is too high of a hill to climb, maybe 10 stories to start. Someone with reasonable technical skill could set up a little shared repository people could post into that would automatically publish the stories.
or maybe my handle is constantreader because I’m just another failed amateur writer who can’t produce anything but theories about how to write, and you shouldn’t trust anonymous commenters on the internet. 🙂
I have some vying desires here. Ideally I would want mine to be longer works. (read novella/novel length). So what if the goal was a story a month? That would get us 12. You pick the length, but beginning, middle, and end.
I know my first drafts suck wigwams. So I would want to fast draft and then edit to the point of not being (too) embarrassed to show them. Because to your point, I want to practice the art of telling a story. So not a million loosely related words. (Related as in they are in the English language)
Worst case, we could always share via google docs or private FB group.
Wiggling eyebrows… you potentially in?
https://www.draft2digital.com/blog/the-first-million-words-are-practice/