I wrote a story a day for 30 days, here's what happened
Long story short, it was awesome
So... Did I succeed ?
YES ! I got thirty shiny new stories in... 31 days. Okay, I lied, sue me. But first, let me explain. Over this month there were only three days I didn't write a full story: the first one I was feeling sick and went to bed early, not able to finish this day's story. Next, the 27 was definitely the worst day for me. Whatever I was doing I just could not get in the mood to write anything. So I skipped this day and wrote more the next. These times, I caught up in two days at most, so my pace was really great. The last day I missed was the last, but I don't count that as a loss. I had the full story in mind and the tone was set. But writing it would mean missing my favorite show. So I decided to postpone the actual writing without any regret. Other than that, I uploaded daily on my website, and with some delay on WA (sorry for the spam when I uploaded all at once by the way) in this manuscript :
Before going to what I learned from this experience, do you mind some stats? My treat :
STATS !
Note: wordcounts were estimated by the "\w+" regex with python and may be slightly off. But close enough to the wordcounter website to be acceptable30
Stories in 30 days
71222
Words written (more or less)
4 hours and 46 minutes
Worth of reading time (according to the estimated french reading time of 249 words per minute)
1399
Wordcount of the shortest story
2374
Mean wordcount for the 30 stories
5428
Wordcount of the longest story
That's about a NaNoWriMo and a half! I definitely wrote a lot this month, and having these 5.5K words written in a day while still being satisfied was a first and a super great feeling! As a whole, I consider the quality of what I wrote to range from great to questionable. And that's good! I'm not dissatisfied with any of them, and even the two that are really worse than the rest are still okayish. That was absolutely not a given as I tend to be overcritical with my work, so I'm incredibly happy with how it turned out.
Endings :
7
Good endings
14
Bad endings
9
Neutral/no endings
Yeah, I'm a funny fellow. My poor characters are not blessed by their author. And there is even one ending the protagonist considers good but is actually neutral at best for the rest of the world!
Worldbuilding :
9
Stories added to existing worlds
11
Brand new worlds were created
8
Standalone stories in our world or worlds I'm not interested in expanding
In addition, I have 2 stories where I'm still hesitant. One can be set either in an existing world or as a standalone, and the other may join a big one or be the beginning of its own world. Either way, I have a new range of worlds to play with and expand at will, some of them sooner than others. The Alchemist's memoirs are two stories in the same world written this month, so the first created the world, and the second integrated the newly birthed one. Fun fact : The Spheres of Oblogga, my most popular world here, came from a story written in a previous challenge.
What I learned
I learned many things this month, especially about the format of the challenge. Without any further ado, let's get to it.
It takes time !
Yeah, no surprise there. But time was the biggest constraint I had and impacted a lot the quality of some stories. It took from 4 to 10 hours per day, which was about all the free time I had on weekdays. I like to play both video games and flute to vent, but even that was hard sometimes. Not to mention other projects that had to get on stand by for the time being. I started a new project just before the challenge and had absolutely no time to continue my research. I somehow managed to finish two challenge articles, Necrotization for Cato's unofficial condition challenge and The Deep Way Down for the River competition. Due to lack of time, both are not as good as they could have been, but that is still a miracle I pulled these off.
Inspiration dries up
In the beginning there is plenty. Then various stories spawn every day until it becomes hard. The last week, finding a story to write was an ordeal. I had crumbs of stories or settings, but nothing good enough, or too close to what I wrote the previous day. Looking back to the fifty-ish thousand words I wrote during NaNoWriMo, it was incredibly harder to find a good idea for a mere 1500 words story than writing 1700 words of a novel. The last stories are not necessarily less inspired than the first ones, but as the month went on research and thinking time slowly increased over true writing time. This is why I stopped at 30 because I couldn't find stories that interested me.
Damn, I've gotten good !
Last time I wrote something meaningful in french, it was Nanowrimo. And what a step up! I hate each and every word of my nano novel and will probably burn all the pages if I ever go back to it. Half a year later, I wrote 20K more words in the same time frame, and the quality has increased so much that it's almost unreal. I still have a long way to go in my writing journey, but it just made me realize how I improved in the last year. And a big part is thanks to you! The wonderful community of this platform helped me push my limits and set a high standard for my own work. Not to mention the incredible writers and all the things I learn from them!
Other considerations
I didn't have time to reflect on my writing, especially since it is still very fresh on my mind. Now I will take the time to think about how to improve from this challenge and continue to deliver better work. I tried to experiment with styles and genres I'm not familiar with, with mitigated results. Detective is very hard to write, more so in a tight schedule and few thousand words. While I don't think I did too bad, next time I attempt a story in that genre I will take my time to prepare it. A great success however came from this urban fantasy victorian style setting with lots of vampires and a likable Alchemist. I never dwelled on this type of story, but it turns out I love writing them! Expect a collection of novellas sooner than later.
What next ?
Even after the challenge is done, I chose not to rewrite the stories. Not entirely at least. I like the raw feelings they have, and I want to leave them untouched (minus the typos). Not to say I won't ever go back to them, but even if I do the first drafts will stay published. No big meaning there, I just like to do so. Then will I challenge myself again? Certainly someday. But for now, I have a lot to prepare for Summercamp. I will translate one of my eldest worlds and expand it.
Would I recommend anyone to do this challenge?
Maybe. It is a way to force yourself to write a lot and explore new paths out of your comfort zone. Every time I did this challenge, even the one time I only reached ten days, I had a whole lot of stories and worlds in my head. If you feel like you're running in circles with your writing, it could help you diversify your work. However, sticking to the rules is extremely time-consuming and may lead to a burn-out that I barely avoided a few times. I advise you to only try it during months you have plenty of free time to write without it affecting your life. Also, don't stress about writing bad or dull stories. Keeping a consistent quality daily is hard, so don't try to write the perfect story every day and just write.
In addition, searching for inspiration allowed me to discover a wide range of artists and styles. I list there some of my favorites and advertise their work because it's only just I try to give them a little bit of what they gave me through their art. To find inspiration, I recommend art accounts on Instagram (only those who credit the artists like _darkartwork and digiartique, others are a real cancer), the explore tab of Artstation; maybe DeviantArt (though I did not really use it) and CGSociety which is more reduced but contains artworks unavailable on other platforms.
Eddie Mendoza
The best of the best, my favorite artist. I just love his style and his rich compositions more than anything else. My main regret is that I wasn't able to honor his work with my stories. He also made the background of Netflix's animated show Tresse, which I recommend you to watch.
Gu Zheng wei
A fantastic style, with very rich backgrounds and characters that seem almost alive. Every artwork tells a fantastic story of its own. "The art of Gu Zheng Wei" is his artbook of awesome quality.
Jocelin Carmes
Another incredible style, even a mere cloud study can make imagination go wild. I feel like all his work is an invitation to a new realm of dreams that I love to get lost in.
Boris Groh
Rather dark, his style is quite unique and tantalizing. He inspired me multiple times and is a great artist.
Maksym Harahulin
This art in particular was a big frustration at first for me, as I just could not find anything worth this amazing piece. It turned out to be one of my favorite stories of this challenge and I was so happy because it was a good tribute to a wonderful artist.
Mirekis
Can you believe this is photography? Mirekis' work is simply astonishing and so eerie, truly one of a kind.
Stefan Koidl
I don't know why, but his art is an incredible source of inspiration for me, so much that I could do a whole challenge only out of his works. Dark and creepy themes adept, he is a master of his trade. He recently launched his book, "the art of Stefan Koidl" that I'm sad not being able to afford.
Philip Sue
The landscapes and style of Philip Sue are really out of this world. I discovered him quite late, but his art made its way to my heart instantly. A universe so full of countless stories could emerge from these pictures. And of course, dragons!
Thank you for reading me talking about myself thus far. To be honest, I mostly wanted to write this post to put into words how I felt after this experience and figured it might interest one or two people. If you have questions about this challenge, awesome artists, or my writing process I'll gladly answer any of them. And I that somehow inspired you to try the challenge following these rules, I would love to know and see how you fare, but be sure not to burn out! Either way, keep up your amazing work, you lovely folks.
