Making it Hard to Fail

My project for the new year is not a creative 'project' persay so much as it is a psychological experiment on myself. The Quest for Imperfection, maybe. The Year of Compounding Small Actions. Sticking an arm outside of my comfort zone instead of my whole body- and who knows- maybe more of my body will be out there by the end of the year, but even if it's not it'll be an arm more than it was before.

In the past, I've tried to START with the ideal. For example, if I ultimately want to see myself easily working 2 plus hours a day on my writing and submissions, etc., I immediately try and wake up and do 2 hours each day. I’m done with that level of perfectionism. I need to stop scaling so large, because if the task seems too big and intimidating, the past has taught me that I won’t start, and even if I do, I’m unlikely to stick with it.

Doing the same thing repeatedly and expecting different results is supposedly the definition of insanity, so this year I want to do something different. In 2025, I want my base goal to be so low, that NOT hitting it is more ridiculous than just sitting down and doing the bare minimum.

To that end, my only resolution this year is to write for fifteen minutes a day.

Here are some of the things I have on deck to back me up:

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NEW TOOLS & METHODS

One thing I did to inspire and invest in myself this year was buy a Freewrite Smart Typewriter.

The premise behind Freewrite products is to introduce a distraction-free writing experience for those of us who struggle with staying focused using a machine that also contains access to the world wide web with just one click (or email, etc...you get the point). It is, simply put, a word-processing machine. I'm most in love with how the keys feel and sound when I'm typing- like an old-school typewriter. Another plus to the Freewrite is that it's kind of time-consuming to backtrack on it- so if changes aren't crucial it effectively puts a halt to that whole 'edit as you write' affliction that a lot of us have. Because this machine is not made for editing, I have separated that task entirely from drafting- I will still likely be editing everything in Scrivener, which I love (in fact, many people apparently use Freewrite and Scrivener together and find it really works to streamline the process!)

Freewrite has an online space called Postbox, which all of your drafts automatically link up to if you have the WiFi key switched on your device. Aside from being an easy synching tool, I also love that Postbox keeps note of how many words I write, both daily and total overtime, and lets me know how many days in a row I've had a writing 'streak.' I am very incentivized by visible milestones like this- it gives me a sense of 'leveling up' and I think it will be so cool to be able to come back here and report exactly how many new words I wrote this year at the end of it.

Freewrite is definitely pricy, and I had been eyeing it for about a year before I buckled down and bought it, but I think if you're like me and you have trouble blocking out stimuli as you work, it will definitely pay for itself over time. I ended up getting a mint green special edition, and I'm glad I did- shortly after Christmas, I saw they were all sold out.

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MAKING IT FUN WITH CHALLENGES:

I personally find my footing a lot easier when I am working within a set of rules, with a sense of imposed structure. Freedom in constraint is very real for me. For this reason, I love a good prompt. I also love the opportunity for feedback and the instant gratification of having my work read- who doesn't? Too often we as writers are very isolated, making it hard when the going gets tough to keep going. And of course, money is always a great motivation and gives us the sometimes much-needed sense that our work is valued- as well as affording the time for those of us who don't have creative careers to spend more time on our art. With these incentives, in mind, here are the top challenges I am excited to either come back to or try anew in 2025:

1. Vocal. Yep, number one is right here, the inspiration for my first piece of writing in the new year- and I'm sure many to come. Though it's not free, I do find Vocal Plus to be well worth the money in terms of value. I love the constant flow of creative prompts with various cash prizes, and I love the community feel and the ability to reciprocate feedback on others' work. I was a big Vocal fan before I went into my big dry spell, and I'm very excited to come back to a tried and true source of inspiration. Also exciting to see some new features have been added, like the ability to subscribe to other authors and the ability to create exclusive content. I'm looking forward to tinkering with all of that and more, and catching up on all I missed. Vocal is not only a big part of how I plan to maintain my resolution- it's the platform that prompted me- through the new year's challenge- to actually articulate my goal and set it down in writing.

2. Globe Soup 7-Day Writing Challenges. These are a lot of fun, and completely free to sign up for! You can do so through email to be notified when they are starting a new challenge. You will automatically be assigned a genre and theme when the event begins. There's no pressure to accept the challenge- there have been times I wasn't in the right space or I found the prompt uninspiring, in which case I simply ignore and skip. As the name implies, you have a week to write a short fiction story based on the prompt and submit it. Work is judged within its assigned genre before the top contenders are pitted against one another. The overall victor wins a cash prize, and many of the runners-up get a mention on the website. You are not automatically published if you don't win, which leaves space and the opportunity to submit your story elsewhere later. I consider this a huge plus as a lot of literary magazines don't want to accept work that's been published elsewhere- even if it's online!

3. NYC Midnight. This is a tournament-style writing competition with several rounds. It does cost money to join, but is a lot of fun and through entering, you get guaranteed feedback on at least one piece of your writing (depends how long you stay in the competition!) Each of the three rounds, those who make it to the next have an even shorter timeframe to write a completely new story. I have done this once and survived two rounds- I found it a lot of fun and I want to try my hand at more categories this year, like flash fiction & microfiction. I found the feedback on what worked and what didn't in my work to be very helpful going forward.

4. Writing Battle. I just found out about this one and I'm so excited to give it a try! Like NYC Midnight, it is a pay-to-enter competition (cheaper prices available for advance registration) and has a sizeable prize pool to draw from. What I love about this one is that there are multiple types of contests to choose from, based on seasons or genres. Some of these are judged by an official panel, while others are peer-judged, in which everyone who participates gets a small part in the reading and decision-making. Having never participated before, I don't have as clear a view of how this one works, but I love the creativity of the setup. You are assigned- and can shuffle and trade in to an extent- a genre, character, and theme from a deck of cards modeled after tarot. It looks like so much fun, and I'm glad I stumbled over it before finishing this list.

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KEEPING GOOD COMPANY

The London Writer’s Salon is a writing group that holds sessions four times a day- 8 am East Coast US, 8 AM Pacific, 8 AM New Zealand, and 8 AM London- so chances are good you can find a time no matter where you live! They get together for an hour and write in silence. Before they do so, they like to share an inspiring quote- which attendees can also submit and read if they like!- and everyone shares their plans for what to work on before we go into a silent 50-minute period of writing. For the last 5 minutes, everyone comes together again to share what we got accomplished in the chat, and a couple of people get called on to share over video- this part is entirely optional.

For those of us who find it easiest to get down to task when others around us are seen busily doing the same, or who don't have access to in-person writing support groups, this is a godsend. The people running it are dedicated and friendly, and it's altogether just an amazing environment and community. To join the daily Zoom writing sessions it's completely free, but for even more value they do have paid memberships where you get access to a load of other resources like interviews, classes, exclusive opportunities, and meetups. I am a Silver Member myself and I love it.

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PUTTING GAS IN THE TANK

For anyone to continue to produce, they need not only tools but fuel. To this end, I want to spend 2025 reading voraciously, as I'm proud to say I did in both 2024 & 2023. They may not have been writing years for me, but during that time I began to cultivate a habit of reading 100 books a year. I plan to continue this habit and to try and read more broadly than I have in the past. I just found out that I enjoy listening to memoirs and nonfiction on audio, a medium I find it almost impossible to enjoy fiction through for whatever reason. I was never into audiobooks before this realization, and now that I've made this discovery, I hope 2025 will be full of more genres than I typically read- or write. Sometimes reading outside of your own genre gives you more unique inspiration for ideas within that genre than reading within it. I use Goodreads to track my yearly reading- again, I like that tangible marker of success. If anyone reading this also has Goodreads, feel free to send me a friend request - I like seeing what others are reading as well :).

Hopefully putting everything down like this not only serves to organize my own mind, but helps to inspire- and maybe hand some new resources to!- anyone else looking to boost their writing productivity in the new year.

In summation: my simple but powerful goal- work on writing for fifteen minutes a day. An easy threshold to meet that can on good days become so much more. I have the tools and the time, now all I need is to stay the course!