The Alchemy of Your First 100,000 Words
Welcome to the Hogwarts Dojo of Creativity and Productivity
They say you have to write your first 100,000 words to get your chops, to awaken those writing muscles and begin working them into some kind of shape.
It’s true. And it’s Magic.
It’s a magical milestone and the best gift you could give yourself as a consumer of the human experience.
As soon as you pass it, you will notice changes…
Whether or not you’ve shown your work to anyone, you’ll start to feel differently about yourself, the world around you and your place in it.
You start to question everything, become interested and interesting and you stop being an easily dismissed and overlooked… ok I’m going to say it… bore.
Why? Because you’ve taken the time to write out the rubbish, and embarked on the lifelong detox of your narrative and distillation of your truth that will mark out your path, if not a writer, then as a person of note.
You’ve begun to find clarity and focus. You’re discovering what brings you un-buyable joy, and a uniquely decluttered vision that helps you edit not just your writing but the larger picture of your hopes, dreams, goals and ambitions.
You’ve hopefully mined enough of what you believed was your narrative till it bored you silly, shaken off that heavy old exoskeleton, and freed yourself to get on to the juicy stuff.
You see, the problem is never the problem, is never the problem, is never the problem… You think you’re angry and upset at your parents and carers, your teachers, your friends, lovers, bosses, the faces on the telly or the dust jacket of that best selling book you saved for and let you down. They all should know better, do it this way, do it that.
But it’s you you’re really railing against. We all lie to ourselves all the time. As a writer, you’ve started to suspect this deep down. That which drives Writer You to interrogate the world around you and reinterpret it for your audience, whether real, imaginary or elusive, drives you to despair until you free it out into the world. As Andy Breckman’s wonderful creation, Monk was wont to say, “It’s a blessing and a curse.”
Until you confront the demons as you have, and cut them down to size, that is.
You’ve discovered the truth that you’re driven because you know you can do better, you can hold yourself to a higher standard, and you can spin yarn into gold if you allow yourself. And the key — that it is you who must give yourself permission to do so, the rest is unprofessional victimhood and I say that as one of the greatest wasters of opportunity I know.
You are no longer a victim.
Your gift to yourself is that you know beyond a shadow of a doubt that you are a writer, one of life’s hunter adventurers, a sorcerer, a soldier and now an immortal.
You have gone out into the world, taken it on, transformed it and left your tale in the path of those who dare to follow. You have grappled with and tested the skills to take a moment’s idle ponderance or face slapping realisation and resolve it in a single utterance like a sage Magus.
You have bayoneted the daily frustrations that bring down mere mortals, spreadeagled their remains, dragged their carcasses to your table and worked them like a baker possessed, slapping them down, turning them over again and again, the very act of their devouring compelling you to repeat the action, torturing your material towards a perfection that can never be attained.
Your reward? A new set of insights and some magical specs you’ll never want to take off again.
Now you’ve entered a magical kingdom from which there is no return to the grey and drab. Everything that happens, every encounter, every random thought or conclusion that flashes across your mind now comes with the banner “Story?” flapping behind it and you begin to see that…
Everything is Content.
This amazing development in your psyche bestows upon your fleeting existence many benefits:
You start to heal.
Pain is magically transformed into material to tear apart, suck the guts out of, beat into submission and forge into a powerful weapon. I’ll have some more of that please!
You grow.
Even the most mundane incident is a secret clue to a higher level of proficiency if you can read its runes. The mad woman who just flew out of her house in a rage, accusing you of spending too long looking at her crooked pathway (yes that really happened to me last week and now I have to avoid passing her house on the way home, a real pain) inspires not only an immortal short story or article (ahem) that previously would have just been a short-lived rant on Facebook, but pushes you to find and examine in the daylight deeply hidden values, prejudices or beliefs, because the act of expression in a meaningful, “writerly” way means you now have to stand by them, rethink them or reassign them and give them to a dastardly new character to explore and expose in your next piece.
You have joined the seekers of Enlightenment.
You have gained the knowledge and understanding that you can and must challenge your normal narrative and everybody else’s because now you’re rocking with a new crew of fellow seekers on a higher path that is demanding, challenging everything you once held dear.
Plus, your newly acquired muse sat on your shoulders, heckling you and whipping you on, is heavy and ravenous. Once you’ve used up your normal fare and rations are low, you are forced to be resourceful. You start to grab the way you normally schlep through life, toss it up in the air and hit it with a:
“This doesn’t have to turn out the way things always seem to go in my life.”
You‘re forced to delve deeper into your knapsack of potions, nostrums and powders and become more daring with your twists, blue notes and fresh takes such as, “I could spend the rest of my life avoiding this house, using that time to get annoyed about it every day letting it stain what remains of my beautiful and privileged visit to planet earth. Or I could decide to take an alternative approach to dealing with this new dent in my universe… Maybe I shouldn’t take this lying down. Maybe I should test her resolve and not change my path at all. Maybe I could push this new boundary, invisible to muggles, and test my powers, seek to spend the hour I would have walked out of my way, staring even harder at that grotesquely sub par handy work in the hope that it is she who freaks out and moves away to avoid me, a la Breaking Bad’s ‘I am the one who knocks’. What’s the worst that could happen…?”
For I am the architect of my life.
There… even pain in the backside lunatics are gifts, original stories with potentially startling outcomes now that you’ve built reframing muscles.
Hmm… maybe the universe threw her into my path just to inspire me to inspire you with this story, which may ripple round the earth inspiring many more…
Maybe the woman is actually a hero, marching out to express her truth, why does she get to fear no outcome? Could I take a leaf out of her book? Maybe I could knock on her door and tell her a few of mine. What would I say? Make a list and proclaim it to the world. Where do those thoughts lead?
Maybe she was talking in code, trying to tell me a deeper truth. Maybe she was having some kind of episode or stroke and I should have helped her. Why do I perceive all confrontation as an attack? What is wrong with me?
Maybe, just maybe, this was the last job her dying husband ever did around the house as he struggled on, comforted that at least he finished the home they made together and left a legacy for his loved ones. Maybe I’m a despicable, judgemental witch? I damn well should walk the walk of the penitent, head bowed with shame.
You get to graduate a fully fledged wizard.
Now that you know everything is content, you’ve whisked up and joined up random events with your wand, perceived perhaps that everything seems to influence everything else, that we’re all connected, you’ve realised that you have a responsibility to examine your part in that.
You may not feel a duty to make it count for something, but you have to admit to yourself once you start giving life to characters, that… well, you don’t know or understand everything or very much about life at all. But that’s great because that which you think you don’t understand is where the magic really happens.
You see, Pandora, you DO have a narrative for those things whether you like to admit it or not and it no longer suffices for you to say, “Oh I don’t do politics/religion/XYZ…” because you’ve written enough now to know that you do have a viewpoint on everything, it’s just that so far, maybe you haven’t noticed or paid attention to that corner of your heart. What if you’re fooling yourself about a lot of things and wasting beautiful opportunities to explore a different way to see and feel?
Some issues haven’t borne confrontation or challenge because they’re just too terrifying. But now you’ve graduated you have developed the beginnings of a toolbox and a set of chops powerful enough to chew to the lid off and take on all foes, for you are now the master of your universe. You get to choose your own narrative, play with it, chuck it around for kicks, abandon it and try on new ones.
Like a lucid dream, far from hiding, you can you use it to fly.
Mastery
With mastery comes freedom. The Holy Grail.
You’ve proved you’ve got what it takes to move beyond other people’s schedules and agendas. You’ve now got the physique to cut down the forest surrounding the castle, rescue your own soul, and forge a fresh path with her cradled safely in your arms.
So slap yourself on the back and be proud for…
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it, And — which is more —… my son…
It takes a certain amount of consistent effort to get through the first 100,000 words down. Consistent effort forms habits. If you’re not forming a good habit, (one that’s useful to your decided goals) you’re forming a less useful one with whatever activity uses up those precious few hours we’re all blessed to be here for. Those less useful habits can grow like weeds and choke our purpose at the root.
You now know that you have what it takes to be successful, the rest is entirely up to you. You are the only monster in your tale. The truth is just that simple.
Success comes down to doing more of what you’ve already achieved — practice.
I get despondent and unsure often, I’m human. Then I look at my muscles. Since lockdown, I’ve been doing a bit of exercise most days. Now that I don’t have to drive an hour to work, I have the energy to do it. I’ve never been one for routine, but I put my weights in my eye line and jump up now and then and get some reps in. Some days I get bogged down in the juggling of more pressing life issues, some days I just veg out and don’t bother and some days I go for it. But I average a few minutes every day.
Result? Without me having to think about it my muscles have grown and my body has changed shape. At no point did my muscles or body have an argument with me about the benefits of change. Neither did I have to find the faith to believe in them or their ability to do so. They never deserted me, went on strike, threw a moody or went in a completely new direction. They didn’t listen to detractors and critics or respond to sad events by shrinking. They just improved because of consistent effort. Because that’s the natural outcome of practice.
So get to it! Crack on! A few words every day soon adds up. And the pesky little mites have a habit of breeding and you may to deal with a whole infestation now and again, in places in your mind you never knew existed. Like those muscles you discover by accident, forced to climb down a cliff to rescue a child’s favourite toy or when your friend has talked you into trying out this new sport, they’ve discovered. Or like a magical potion you discovered by accident when you threw your past in a cauldron and mixed it up with some applied new thinking.
You don’t know what you think about a lot of stuff, yet. Let the words take you there.
If you’ve not yet made it past the magical milestone, just keep going one step at a time.
Stuck for inspiration?
Not sure how you you feel about stuff? Read other stories, let yourself react and answer them. This very article came from a response I made to a lovely article written by Deborah Oyegue, How To Harness Failure Like JK Rowling. Here’s the link: https://debbietiyan.medium.com/
It just sparked a thought, and here we are.
Finding success as a writer will always comes down to the same single action of writing.
Write, publish, be damned, write again.
About the Creator
Alexis Behrend
Mother, lover, educator, escapee. Obsessed with finding ease in relationships, health, wellbeing and the juggling of life. @alexisbehrend.
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