#milwordy

[author-a-holmes]

2026 Writing Plans

Okay, look.

I have a lot of health problems. I don't talk about them a lot because I have so much going on it tends to start sounding like a "woe is me" post, but because I know I have a lot going on I tend not to make long-range plans.

HOWEVER!

I just heard about a writing challenge called Milwordy, where you try and get 1 million words in a year.

Uh, I did the math on that, and it's a little over 2,700 words every single day, without a skip. I know me, and I know I'd never be able to keep up that pace.

However x2!

It did get me thinking.

And I did some math...

There are 365 days in 2026. I checked.

If I allow 7 "Grace Days" or 0-Word-Days a month, to account for appointments, and health flare ups, that would be 7daysx12months=84days. 365-84 Leaves me 281 writing days.

Additionally, I'd like to take off another 6, because I usually finish writing for the year on December 19th, since there's Xmas, New year, and my brother's birthday all in the same tail-end of the year. That would leave me 275 writing days.

I know, from doing Nanowrimo for years, that I can't consistently keep up 2.5k a day without burning out. I also know that I CAN do 3-4 writing sprints (My sprints are usually 20 minutes, with a 10 minute break). And the final thing I know is that, when I'm doing a first draft, my average word count per sprint is around 600 words.

600 words x 3 sprints is 1,800 words a day. But this is meant to be a challenge, so I'll round that up to 2,000 words.

2,000 words x 275 days is 550,000 words

Again, in the interests of this being a Challenge, and because I might not need all my sick days, and there may be some days I can do 4+ Sprints, or achieve higher word counts in 20mins, etc... I'm going to round up again.

So, long story short, I'm going to try and challenge myself to write 600,000 words in 2026.

If I can do it, that would get me to the end of the Fey Touched Trilogy, and either two of my stand alone's completed, or the next book in the Stolen Stories drafted. Which, in a year, is insane?

But even if I get half that, it would still be a ridiculous amount of progress, and the stats mean it's not an unreasonable amount of work or time to ask of myself; Theoretically, it's 1 hour of writing a day, with 7 days off a month.

So, there we go. Accountability.

I'm going to give it a try. Guess we'll see how it goes!

[the-inkwell-variable]

I just broke 50k faster than I ever have with National Novel Writing Month.

Maybe I should do this Milwordy think more often?

[infinitelyblankpage]

I’m doing a thing ...

It’s probably a bad idea, but that’s my speciality! I don’t know where this thing came from (I think it has something to do with NaNo?) It’s certainly not an original idea, but some writer dude somewhere said it takes a million words to “get good” as the kids say. So I’m making a million words!

[writing-prompts-for-friends]

Day 1 of the Milwordy Challenge

☝ Me by the end of this

I told quite a few of my friends that I would be starting the Milwordy Challenge, and the reactions were generally the same:

First, "What is that?"

Then, after I had explained that it was attempting to write one million words in one year, "Are you insane?"

I suppose the answer to that second question is yes. I can't be completely sane to undertake such an extreme challenge when I work full time and overtime is not out of the ordinary.

I have been writing since I was eight years old. I have no doubts that if you counted up everything I have ever written in these past twenty-two years, it would surpass one million. But the most I have ever written in one year is probably somewhere around half a million. So the Milwordy Challenge is the biggest undertaking of my career as an amateur writer.

But I think that while framing it as a "challenge" invites the competitive spirit that engages so many, it may be best to frame it as a "chance" for myself.

In May, I underwent a large and serious surgery for the first time in my life, and when I was convalescing, I had time to think about my life and what I wanted to do with it. This is my last year being in my twenties. I have ticked some things off my bucket list, but there are still a thousand things on that list, and I keep tricking myself into thinking that they're going to cross themselves off.

And while I was in that hospital bed, I realized that I'm the only one holding the pen.

Getting a piece of my writing published is one of the oldest items on that bucket list, just beneath "Go to Egypt" and "Get as good at karate as Chuck Norris." While I've pretty much given up on the karate one, I'm currently saving up for Egypt.

My writing...

I keep telling myself that I'm not ready yet, I'm not good enough yet, I don't have enough time, my muse isn't feeling it. I have more excuses than I do paper and ink.

However, when I was in the hospital with nothing but time, I decided to myself: 2020 may be a hellhole of a year, but this is the year I'm going to start taking my writing seriously.

Then I joined a wonderful Discord for writers and learned about the Milwordy Challenge.

This isn't a challenge--this is a chance.

Do I think, realistically, that I'll be able to write one million words in a year? With work, probably not. 

But do I have a million words worth of ideas in my head? Absolutely.

Some participants are viewing one million as the finish line, but I'm viewing it as a god up on a pedestal, one that I am going to do my best to emulate and become. And if I don't manage to meet the goal, that's okay. At least I'll have succeeded in throwing out all of those excuses and I'll have written way more words than I would have if I didn't have this goal to push me forwards.

What am I going to be working on during this challenge? Well, both of my original fantasy novels are taking the forefront. I also plan to work on two ongoing novel-length fanfics, as well as notes on various books I read about the craft of writing, blog posts like this one, writing prompts, and editing a friend's novel.

I'm really looking forward to this year of writing, not only to see what comes out of my pen, but what comes out of everyone else's!

Are you doing the Milwordy challenge? Are you interested in joining in? Feel free to DM me here on tumblr, or join the Discord That Writing Place, where hundreds of writers support each other and form a wonderful community and we have a group of people participating in Milwordy!

Happy writing! 📜🖊💕

[aanautumnwriter]

MilThirdy For 30

Starting Wordcount 22nd December 2020

Project - Starting Wordcount

R&R- 862

Unfortunates- 12,554

Swan- 4,583

Kirkland- 9,576

Rockstar- 22,130

Randoms- 1,494 (ideas without own scrivener set-up- things may move into own wip scrivener document, there may be more if I find/ type up old notebooks but I’ll note that as I go)

Total- 50,669

Target for 22nd November 2021- 384,002

[cecesxwickedxocsx]

Oh holy crap, today marks the start of Milwordy

[deborahdeshoftim5779]

MY CRAZIEST, LONGEST WRITING EXPERIMENT YET // dear 2021 me...how's milwordy?

Kate Cavanaugh plans to write 1 000 000 words between September 1, 2020 and August 31, 2021. 

[newbenovelist-blog]

My MilWordY Challenge

I’ve recently found out about a challenge called the MilWordY- also known as, the Million Word Year. As a writer who loves to challenge herself, I immediately thought this would be a great idea. It would also give me the push I needed to actually start writing the novels I’ve had planned for over a year. I decided that I should probably document, my progress to some extent, both to keep myself honest and to connect with anyone who is also wanting to do this challenge. I plan on starting on September 21st, 2019. As my job lets me use my laptop whenever I wish, I’m planning on using most of writing time while I’m there and relatively distraction-free, because not many people wander in at 2 am. 

I’m not the best at math, but here is what I think I want my break down of writing projects to be:

7 Novels (60,000+ a piece, making it at least 420,000)

7 Novellas (30,000+ a piece, making it at least 210,000)

370 short stories, prompts, character challenges, etc (1,000+ a piece, making it at least 370,000)

That makes the goal exactly 1,000,000. I already know I”m going to go over some word counts, and I might be just shy of others, so I’m hoping that it will even itself out over the year. Now, here comes the fun math.

1,000,000 divided by 12 is 83,333.3 repeating, so for my sanity, I’m rounding it to 83,334. Which means each month I will need to write 83,334 words. Weekly, that’s roughly 20,833.5. Again, I’m giving myself a wiggle room by rounding it up to 20,834 a week. This means my daily goal should be 2739.7, which I’m going to call a solid 2,740. 

Every day for a year, I’m going to have to write 2,740 words. I’m hoping to crank out more than that on a daily count so that I can have a few days off- like holidays, or days I’m taking trips, or just days I don’t want to write. Currently, I can sit down and get out about 5,000 words a night when I feel like writing, so I’m hoping this isn’t too hard. 

Tomorrow’s going to be my first day. I plan on doing a Daily update on Twitter and instagram (@newbenovelist) with my numbers and stats, but I will do a weekly update here as well so that anyone who is also doing this challenge can compare and contrast with me. I’d love to hear from anyone whose doing this challenge, or even just going through the writing process with any tips or tricks!