I truly didn’t feel like writing today, not after talking last night with a friend who lives in Minneapolis and seeing online everything that was going on in her city, a few short miles from her idyllic home on a quiet side street.

I really didn’t feel like writing fiction. I figured that if I wrote anything, it would be a blog post or essay or journal entry about the dumpster fire that is our current reality.

Yet somehow—just because I saw #1000wordsofsummer on Twitter yesterday and I thought, “Okay, sure, whatever” and signed up for the daily email—I went back to the novel that has lain fallow for months, since before the pandemic took over everything, and I wrote 1,007 brand new words.

The challenge is to write 1,000 words every day for fourteen consecutive days, beginning today. You can sign up for the daily email to encourage you, but you don’t have to. There’s no sign-up fee or other cost. Nobody is going to check up on you to see if you’re really writing every day and you’re really producing the full 1,000 words every day. Nobody is even going to know you’re doing the challenge at all unless you tell them.

I’m pretty lousy at sticking with commitments like this, but I’ve decided to go for it. Part of me wants to say something like, “Hey, even if I don’t do it all, it’s better than nothing,” but I know myself well enough to know that if I think that way, I’ll stop the first time it’s inconvenient, because I’ve run into a scheduling glitch or I feel too tired or I just can’t think of anything to write.

So, no “trying” here–I’m going to do it. For the next thirteen days, the first item on my day’s to-do list will be “write 1K words,” and I’ll check in here when I finish. If you feel like joining the challenge and you want to report in below, feel free.

Off to work now. I’ll see you all tomorrow after I write the next #1000wordsofsummer.