This Sunday, two days ago, I decided I was tired of not taking writing as seriously as I’d like to. If I need to practice an instrument every day to improve, why would I not write every day to hone my craft? Therefore, I decided to challenge myself to write every day for 100 days on a random prompt. I asked ChatGPT to help me make a list of common tropes in different genres of writing (listen, if we don’t want the AI to take our creative jobs, we can at least use them to help out our own creativity!) and plugged that list into a wheel. (Check out the wheel HERE!) My plan is to use 3 tropes from this wheel, randomly generated, each day, and write in a stream-of consciousness style based on those tropes.
In order to focus on what I’m writing, I’ve learned I have to use some specific techniques. I’ve had ADHD since childhood and am on a constant journey to learn how to best accomodate my own mind. One tool I swear by for writing sprints or for simply forcing myself not to get distracted is Squibler’s Most Dangerous Writing App. It lets you choose either a time target (3, 5, 10, 15, 20, 30, or 60) or a word count target (75, 150, 250, 500, or 1667) and you must write for either the full length of time or the full amount of words without stopping. I plan on using this tool for a good amount of this challenge to myself, on the 1667 word setting, and just writing what comes to me.
Of course, I also hope to write some poetry, which will need to be produced a different way. But this should work for any story snippets or short stories that emerge from this experiment.
I’m excited!