For a Year and a Day: What I Learned from Writing an Hour a Day, 366 Times

Today I completed an entire year and a day of writing.

What do I mean?

One year ago, on February 1st, 2020, I decided to commit to writing for one hour per day, every day, for an entire year. I have now done it.

I’m not sure what to say about it.

Is it worth talking about?

Is there some insight I can impart?

I’m not sure there is. Others think it is remarkable, I suppose. Maybe it is? It’s not like I’m the only one who’s every done it. Stephen King has, and I suspect he did it most of his career.

There are some who say they have been inspired by this exercise. I am glad if that is the case. I was inspired by others, and so if I have passed that along, I am glad for it. But it was not my intention to inspire, only to hold myself accountable every day to do what it is I say I do: write. I cannot really be a writer, if I do not write, and the more I write the truer I am.

Of course, writing, does not mean ‘good writing.’ Much of what I’ve written this past year is complete and utter horse-shit. Many times during the year Paysh or Duke have asked me how the writing went. I had to admit, more times than not, that it was shit.

Duke always pushes back, “You shouldn’t say that…” But I am only being honest and objective when I say it. I know the difference between a good day of writing and a shitty one. I also know when I’ve written something at the top of my game. And when I do, I will admit it. But the odds are, when I’m asked, it is a shitty writing day.

But that isn’t the point — shit or not. The point is that I wrote for an hour and stopped. Then I did it again the next fucking day, and the next after that. It is through repetition that we learn things, and discover things. That I cannot, now, articulate what I have learned, beyond the commitment met, is I suppose a testament to my lack of writing ability, or thinking ability.

Should I give some stats? Maybe that will put it in to perspective?

Over the last year:

• I have written for 366 hours: one hour per day for 366 days, since 2020 was a leap year.
• I have written a total of 468,883 words. If all of those were usable, they would amount to about 3 fairly long novels. They aren’t all useful, however.
• I averaged about 1284 words per day, that’s per hour. This is considerably lower than my average used to be, maily because there were days when I had little say, and I sat there staring at the page instead of just dumping more crap upon it.
• My record high was 3708 words on Feb, 11th, 2020. They were all horse-shit, and I’m pretty sure I broke the world’s record for the number of ‘fucks’ written in one hour. And no, I didn’t fucking count them.
• My least productive day was 9 words, on Dec 23rd, 2020. I wrote 9 words, then sat, meditating for the rest of the hour. This was within the ‘rules,’ if there were any. Some days, I just didn’t give a fuck, but that did not let me off the hook for sitting there.
• 66,003 words of my total word-count — or about 14% — were listed as ‘horse-shit:’ words no one will ever read, including myself. They were just fingers typing senseless crap, or just free-association.
• 151,514 words — about 33%, a third of the total — were on my current Work in Progress: Anno Draconis, pt 3, so can be classified as useful words.
• The rest of the words — roughly 250,000 (53%) — were scattered over several projects that popped up during a particularly trying year. I have started at least seven new book projects as a result of my scattered, distracted mind. They are as follows:
• Payshee’s Popcorn Story
• Petite but Powerful: How to build a neighborhood farmers market
• Southern Man: a introspective look at my own life and my own racism and racial biases, along with questions about the larger systemic racism problem in our country. This was sparked, in large part, by the George Floyd murder.
• A Post-Capitalism Plan for Saint Paul, because we’re gonna need it, soon.
• Numerous articles on racism, the state of our country and the world
• A book on Real Christianity. That’s all I’m gonna say about it at the moment.
• Scattered chapters of later Draconis books?
• Anno Draconis, Pt 3 (and maybe pt 4?)

My writing was all over the place, but that’s how my fucked up brain works.

There were days, like my lowest word-count day, where I wrote almost nothing. But I sat there and listened to sounds in my headphones, or to music and meditated. It wasn’t very Zen like, so don’t form the wrong picture in your head. Most of those days, I was just pissed off at the world with little clue as to what to say, or do, about it. I had already said it, more than once, and either had not published it, or if I had, no one really read it.

There are days when I sat, typing shit, or just staring, wondering, What the fuck am I doing? Who fucking cares what I think? This is just a bunch of drivel and horse-shit. Some days the words came, but were largely vitriol and curses at the world. Others were introspective, wondering if I’d lost my fucking mind, or if I was the only sane one (I’m fairly certain it’s the former). But I type on…

It doesn’t matter, in the end, who is sane and who is not. Sanity? What is that? There is no reliable measurement. It is simply a metric dreamed up as a social norm. It does not prove society as a whole is in fact, sane, only that there are more inmates than guards; one flew over that nest already.

I have come to the conclusion, in 2020, if not long before, that all of society and civilization is mad, and I don’t mean angry. What are we chasing? Look around. We race from one place to another, day after day, year after year, decade after decade, to catch what? MORE. More what?

More money, more toys bought with that money, while the real wealth slips away, or is burned up in the production of money and toys. It would be the same if we were chasing, say, inches.

Money has precisely the same reality as inches. It is a measurement of wealth, not wealth itself. No one can show me the money; it doesn’t exist in the physical world, anymore than inches do.

Both are concepts. Useful concepts, I will concede, but concepts, only. Just like time, hours, minutes. Also not real, but yet useful conventions. Money is a convention, an agreement between people trying to live together without war. Did it work? Nope. Apparently not. For most of our wars are about money these days.

Some of them are about wealth: food, water, shelter, land. But most are not. Most wars are fought over things even less tangible: religion and politics. Some of them used to be fought on philosophical grounds, and I suppose one could argue that religion and politics are philosophical positions, but most wars these days are simply wars of fear, of hate.

Why? Because our religious and political leaders profit from our fear and hatred, and because they grew up believing the same horse-shit fed to them by their leaders.

Anyway. I digress. The world is mad. I write on.

If you’re a writer, keep writing.

If you do something else, fucking do that.

Winston Churchill — bastard that he was — once said, “If you’re walking through hell, just keep walking.” Or writing…

ARe there any other insights I’ve gained this year?

Having someone to keep you on track is good. For me, that was my partner, Patience, and my writing buddy, Noosha. Noosha and I have never met, in person. She lives in another state, but we became friends on Twitter, in the #writingcommunity, some time ago. Every day, we exchange word-counts. Eventually, I just started sending her my word-count selfie.

Where I write isn’t that important. I didn’t really track my locations like I should have, or have in the past. Almost all of it was written here in my house, thanks to Covid.

I began the year, in February looking for somewhere to work outside the house, mainly to encourage myself to get some exercise. I planned to ride my bike somewhere to write, then back home. I don’t exercise just to be exercising. That’s insanity in my book. I don’t walk or ride just to do it. I have to have a reason to go somewhere, or it’s too easy to slack off and not do it.. So, in late February, Paysh signed me up for a membership at Creator’s Space, downtown, an artist community. Very cool space.

I even planned to start up my old Blue Harbor writing group again, and in fact, in early March, I planned our first meeting there. We held it, but under the coming threat of Covid, which at that time I scheduled it, I wasn’t sure was a big deal. But by the time the actual meeting came, it was apparent that things were going to be bad.

Just the day before our meeting, the NBA suspended the rest of its season, and College Basketball decided to curtail public attendance at March Madness, then canceled it altogether a couple days later. So when we met that first time, I cautioned the ladies there — they were all women — that we might not be meeting again for some time. None of us realized we would not meet again for an entire year and counting.

A couple months later, I canceled my membership to Creator’s Space, because I didn’t see the risk worth taking, just to have a ‘cool space’ in which to write.

Plus, spring was coming, which meant I could soon be on my front porch to write, which is what I did all late spring, summer, and fall. Now, of course, I’m back in the house.

I don’t write much in our home office these days, or last year, because I wasn’t the only one sent home to work. Paysh was informed the same week as my first and last writing group meeting that she would be working from home, “indefinitely.” She has been ever since, and she took up her small desk in the home office, where my big desk is.

So I abandoned the office for the porch, then the living room, because she has to take a lot of calls during the day, which are a distraction, even if I’m wearing headphones. I’ve written in all kinds of spaces, from hotel rooms, to basement libraries, to my porch, and my back deck, to my outdoor bar, to bars full of people and loads of noise, to pubs. It doesn’t really matter that much.

But the writing went on, day after day, week after week, and month after month. And here I am, writing about the writing.

The time of day varies, but I do most of my writing in the mornings. Before this adventure, that usually meant really early, like 3 to 4 a.m. But since Covid, it varies wildly, from 3 a.m., to 11:59 a.m. I usually save the editing for the afternoon.

That brings me to the editing. I used to struggle with editing and writing in the same day; they are very different mental functions, and it’s always been difficult for me to code-switch. I used to write for weeks, or months, finish the first draft, then edit. But I knew I had to crack that problem, or I’d either have to not write every day, or never edit and publish anything. I didn’t actually publish anything in 2020, because I got stuck on Anno Draconis, part two, and distracted by shit from the outside world.

After some thought on the problem, I decided in May, last year, to do the same thing with editing: one hour per day. My plan was to write in the morning, take a break for lunch and maybe some household chores, then edit sometime in the afternoon.

I’ve been doing that since May 11th: 261 days straight. It has mostly worked out. I have done a great deal of editing on part two, and I can see an end in sight at least. I owe an apology to my readers. I wrote the rough draft of that book a couple years ago, before I even published the first part. A great deal of part three and maybe even four, are in rough draft form now. I hope that this year I will get my ass in gear and get parts two and maybe three out?

We shall see.

I haven’t really begun to edit three, as I need to get the details down for part two to make sure I’m not writing shit that ain’t even gonna happen. So most of my new writing has been on the other stuff I mentioned.

I wrote a good bit, early last year on part three, and what might even be part four. The third book has ballooned into a very big one, unless I break it up. It’s already 141,000 words, and the ‘end’ of that story is not in sight, yet. And I’m sure there are holes to fill, which will inflate it even more.

I wish I had time to just write and edit every day. If so, I’d spend two hours writing, and maybe even two editing. But the writing doesn’t fill the fridge or keep the lights on, so I have to do other things, like run a farmers market — which was part-time pay, and is now gone, and a popcorn company, and now I’m looking to run a hot dog cart, part time.

Why did I do this thing? Writing every day for a year and a day?

Because I knew that only a total commitment would work. Simply saying I would write ‘Monday through Friday,’ would give me a break on the weekends, and breaks kill momentum and gives me an ‘out.’ I didn’t want an out. I wanted an absolute. Absolutes dispense with thoughts of slacking off.

“Well, Monday is a bank holiday, so that’s kind of like the weekend, so I don’t really have to write on Monday,” kind of shit. Nope. So the answer, when I ask myself, on Monday, or Saturday, or Christmas Day, or Ground Hog Day, or National Donut eating day, “Is today a writing day?” is “Fuck yeah, mutherfucker! Every fuckin’ day is writing day.” There is no break.

I have asked myself, “What if I get really sick?” My answer was, “Write anyway.” Now, that could be impossible, if I were sick enough I were unconscious or something. But if I were not, I would attempt to write something, even if it were scribbled on a napkin in my hospital room. Even if that was only two words, “Fuck off!” I would count it. Like I said, I don’t have a word count goal. It’s a time goal, and a daily goal. One hour, per day. If it takes me an hour to write ‘fuck off,’ then that’s how long it takes.

I have also transfered this system of commitment to an exercise routine.

I don’t have to walk or run for ten fuckin’ miles every day. I just have to do some kind of movement/exercise, every fuckin’ day. Doesn’t matter how long, either. Might take a few seconds, or it might take an hour. Most of the time it’s like 5 to 20 minutes. That’s where I give myself a break, on the time, type, duration; anything counts. But I’ve been doing that now for almost 140 days in a row, so coming up on 5 months. It can be done. But the trick is that I don’t get a day off. “Is Tuesday walking day?” Doesn’t fuckin’ matter; it’s exercise day, just go do something.

Too many people get caught up in rigid goals, and then they quit if they fail at them, or come up short one day. “Well, I didn’t get my 10,000 steps in today, might as well chuck it all in!”

That’s why I built some slackness into my system: no word-count goal, just a time, and every day. For the exercise, just every day, something. And I record it in a spreadsheet. I also take photos, usually selfies, to which I add the word-count, edit count, and my exercise and the time I spent on it, in a text box.

I post these to social media. Many of my friends have said it has been inspirational. I’m glad. But mostly, it keeps me focused on it. And I have a record of it to look back on.

Will I continue this commitment? I think so. I plan to. Wanna follow? You can find me on the big socials: FB, IG, and the Tweeter.

I’m not sure there’s anything else to be said.

Want some unsolicited advice? No? Tough shit, here it is anyway.

If you want to accomplish something, commit to doing something on it, every damned day for a year. Every day. Do not take a day off. But give yourself slack on ‘what’ that something is, or ‘how long you do it’ or ‘how much you have to do,’ in order for it to count. Then count it. Put it in a simple spreadsheet (date, time, word-count or whatever). If you want, take a selfie and post it every day. People will follow and help with encouragement and praise.

A journey of a thousand miles, is just one step at a time. Don’t worry about day 3, just do day 1, and then day 2, eventually Day 366 will come around, and you will have accomplished something on the way to your larger goals.

Steve Bivans is the author of the Amazon #1 Best Sellers: Vikings, War and the Fall of the Carolingians, The End of Fear Itself, the epic-length, self-help, sustainability tome, Be a Hobbit, Save the Earth; and Anno Draconis: Dawn of the Dragon. He loves to hear from his readers! CONTACT STEVE