It was mid-August in 2014. I was sitting on my back deck with a notebook, freewriting scenes of what I hoped would be my first short story in a very long time.
I hadn’t written creatively in ages, and I missed it.
I’d spent the previous five months very sick with ulcerative colitis. My autoimmune disease had flared in the spring, rendering it almost impossible for me to leave my house, eat, or function normally.
An “arthritic reaction” to a medication left me almost unable to walk for about four weeks in the midst of the flare. The joints in my hips and knees and my entire lower back screamed every time I tried to go up or down the stairs, walk the dog, or sit on the couch.
Thankfully, I worked from home full time. I did my best to power through the workday, but by the time I logged off, my body would give out and I’d be asleep on the couch before dark.
When the flare started to ease up by the end of summer, my husband and I went on a trip to Bermuda for our anniversary. When we got home, I had the feeling I wanted to write about the island, but I was so out of practice from having no energy to write that I didn’t know where to begin.
I opened my notebook and wrote a few pages of a potential story. It was horrible. Too forced, too stiff.
I needed to write a short story and I needed it to be decent, and I needed my brain to work again, but everything I wrote felt like cardboard.
I settled back in my chair and exhaled. The sky was going a goldeny pink color. The air was warm and humid and smelled like low tide. My neighborhood was quiet except for the distant sound of a lawnmower and the occasional car driving by.
I felt, momentarily, like I was back in Bermuda. Warm and content and so at ease.
Here’s what you’re doing to do, I told myself after a minute, once the frustration of writing passed. You’re going to write for 100 days. Every single day. But there are rules.
You have to write at least one sentence, and it has to be creative. Work emails don’t count as writing. You can write in this notebook or on your phone or computer.
And the biggest rule is that you can’t have any expectations for any of it. You’ll write for the day, as little as a single sentence but hopefully more, and then you’ll leave it there and not worry about if it’s good or bad, what it might turn into, or if it’s worth revising. Just write and leave it on the page.
I made the decision swiftly and without second guessing it. I started that evening. Day one was thrilling. Day two had me questioning my sanity.
The first fourteen days were difficult. I resisted the practice as if doing it would physically harm me somehow.
But then something clicked one day.
Instead of feeling resistance, I started to feel that I didn’t want to miss my writing session. It began to feel as crucial to my routine as brushing my teeth.
It went from being something I had to consciously do, to something that suddenly felt like a non-negotiable part of my day.
Once I was past that hump, the writing came easier, too. I was doing prompts and exercises every day, and even revisited my favorite online writing program, The Story Course.
I would write for a few minutes or an hour, depending on the day and how into the writing I was feeling.
And then when I was done, I’d leave it on the page and not worry about it.
One day, a few weeks into the 100 days, I worked on an exercise in The Story Course (under my favorite lesson, Plot & Drift) that had me make a connection between two seemingly unrelated words.
The words were denim and fennel. I wrote about two people standing in a patch of wild fennel. The air around them glowed. It was dusk. They were of another time period, but I couldn’t tell much more than that.
The image was so clear and specific and made me curious to the point I kept thinking about it and wrote about it again the next day.
And the next and the next until I realized I had a story on my hands that wanted to be told.
The rest of my 100 days were spent freewriting about this one image. I wrote many pages that never saw the light of day again, but it hardly mattered.
Within those pages were the seeds of what became my first novel, a project I’d work on exclusively for the next four years.
I fully credit those 100 days for helping me write a book. I fully believe you too can harness the power of this process as a way to enhance your creative process.
Why It Works
The formula is simple: consistency + a challenge = success.
One hundred days sounds like a lot, but it goes very quickly. For me, it’s just the right amount of time to feel slightly daunted yet energized by the prospect of accomplishment.
Once you push through the muck of resistance, you’ll start to feel ease around the whole process. That ease comes from consistency. Consistency creates a habit.
And habit is the magic sauce that will help you write come hell or high water.
When you turn writing into a reliable habit rather than something you feel obligated to do or something you actively resist or something you can only do under special circumstances, you’re so much more productive and happy.
There’s no drama when your writing is a habit. It’s just easy. The stuff you write might be hard in its own way, but the act of writing will be easy.
Sitting down and getting started will be second nature instead of a hostage negotiation. That alone makes it worth writing for 100 days!
How To Get Started
Just… get started.
Ok, I know that sounds too easy and too hard at the same time, but that’s all it is! It’s a choice.
You don’t need any special tools or equipment. It costs nothing. You don’t need more than a couple of minutes a day. You just need to decide you’re doing it and agree to the rules, especially the rule about having no expectations.
If you go into this expecting to come out with a novel, you’ll struggle. But if you go in with no expectation except that you’ll write something each day, I promise you’ll surprise yourself.
Don’t plan ahead. There’s no way you can predict the incredible things that’ll show up on the page when you’re committed to writing consistently.
If this is something you want to try, make it as simple as humanly possible for yourself.
Keep a notebook and pen handy (bedside table, kitchen counter, in your bag).
Set a reminder on your phone. Ask someone you trust to keep you accountable.
And remember you don’t have to write more than one sentence. You can write a single sentence, can’t you? It doesn’t have to amount to anything once it’s written. You just have to write it. And once you write it, you’re done for the day.
Unless you feel a spark and keep writing, which is ok too.
At the end of 100 days, you might have one or a dozen new stories to work on. You might be in the middle of your novel. Or you might simply have the sheer satisfaction of sticking with your writing for 100 days.
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