030 | looking back on one month of daily writing

looking back on one month of daily writing.

January by the numbers

Total words written 9184 words

Shortest story 30 words

Longest story 1526 words

The things I noticed

The past month has been challenging and exciting at the same time. As I go through the 30 stories I’ve written the past month, I can slowly start to make out some general tendencies for myself.

The first thing I notice is that I like to reflect a lot. Place things into perspective, see if there’s a lesson to be learned. It’s a trait I am proud of and deserves cultivation. I don’t say I succeed at this all the time but I do believe I keep this in the back of my mind.

Most of these stories are like ‘thoughts in process’ that haven’t quite developed into well rounded opinions yet. Writing some of does down has certainly been cathartic. Though sometimes they end up being pretentious ramblings that even I can’t make much sense of after the fact.

I do like more concrete entries like ‘Looking back’. Where I look back at old work and share a mix of memories and current thoughts about it. I think I’ll continue doing this for the rest of the year.

All in all, the general feeling I get when looking at what I’ve written is that it’s a beautiful collection of detail and intricacies that I otherwise never would’ve remembered. As a documentation device, these Monologues have been excellent. Despite them forcing me to come off like a pretentious douche every now and then.

Further thoughts

To be honest, I thought about quitting a few times. Not because it’s that hard to continue, I’m having surprisingly little trouble writing little things everyday. Sometimes I just come up with these stupid stances and half-baked opinions that I would rather sit on a little longer before sharing them.

Some of the things I’ve written down the past month haven’t been articulated that well and I believe it’s not a good reflection of who I actually am or what I am trying to convey. The only reason they exist on here is because I have to write an entry every day and I try to say something of value each time.

It’s nearly impossible to come up with a groundbreaking perspective everyday though and I should remind myself of that more. Concurrently, I deliberately decided to start this project to improve my writing skills. There are bound to be a few bad stories in the process and I should embrace that.

At the same time, it has become a mental exercise. As these daily Monologues are a recording of my process¹ I try to keep them as clear and concise as I can. Even when all I have at my disposal at the time is a bunch of ramblings. That way I can look back on these past entries and build on those to advance further thinking. Writing stuff down should take me out of singular thought-patterns as they force me to give words to vague ideas floating around my head.

Only when you vocalise some things is when you realise how stupid they are. There’s no shame in that. That’s just another lesson learned.