Reflecting on Freewriting 1000 Words A Day

Back in November of 2013, I stumbled on an article on Medium that talked about making a habit of writing 1000 words a day. Around the same time, I also started to freewrite 1000 words a day and did so for the past few months. Most of it was total freewrite, so any words that came to my fingers or the dreams and thoughts that went through my head.

Some became album reviews, blog posts, tweets and Facebook statuses. The majority were rubbish. I started each morning with the exercise, not ceasing until I had indeed reached at least 1000 words. In the end, it became exhausting. I ran out of things to write and it became repetitive. I also often found myself ruminating in negative thoughts over and over. Sometimes it would take up the entire morning and would leave me with little energy to do anything else (though I think that partially has to do with winter SADS). The quality and my enthusiasm for the exercise had plummeted. I didn’t want to write to fill a quota any longer.

That doesn’t mean I’ll stop writing, hell I’m writing this blog post right now. However, like I said in my

New Years Resolutions vlog, I don’t want to set strict guidelines for myself that will make me hate things that I normally enjoy. I’ll remain living in the moment and writing the second inspiration hits, like 11pm right now. I’m sure the 1000 word writing challenge can be helpful and useful to some, but it isn’t for me!