This stream will self-destruct after 1000 words...

Today is my first day of the 1000 Words of Summer experiment! I grabbed a tea this morning, did half a page of handwriting in my story notebook, and then immediately hopped into a new Scrivener document.

Honestly? It felt so easy and smooth!! But I often find that I start challenges strong and it's not until midway through that I find myself dipping or struggling. Still, I do have some things I plan to change for tomorrow and the rest of the experiment!

My goal is to lean into the idea of a "writing bootcamp" more and for that, I've bought an extra tool:

This is a 15-minute timer and I want to use it as a bit of a "warm up" to really get my brain ready for my 1,000 words. I'll do some handwriting, maybe read one of the "letters" in the Jami Attenberg book, and even jot down some quick bullet points to figure out what my 1,000 words will actually cover for the day!

I think a cute little "cool down" would also be a fun idea, but I'm not sure what I want to do for that yet. Any suggestions?? Maybe this is where I could journal how I'm feeling about what I wrote for the day!

(Could I have just used my phone or clock? Yes, lolol. But I've been wanting a sand timer, they're so fun!)

To that end, I also thought it would be silly and fun to do a livestream version of the bootcamp one day! So this Friday, July 26th, at 7:45am CDT, I'll host for as long as it takes me to write 1,000 words (with bonus warm up and cool down bahaha). So basically a total of three "sprints." That should also roll me directly into our D100 Friday stream over on Twitch. :)

And for our final stream of the month, we'll be chaos sprinting and also discussing our Crafts & Drafts book club pick, Big Magic! I'll have discussion questions prepared and I'm excited to hear what y'all think! I was at a very different place in my life the last time I read this, so it's been an interesting experience to retrace some of those steps and hear this advice again.

That will be on Monday, July 29th, at 3:45pm because the very next day, I'll be heading out to help my brother David move up to Ohio to begin PA school!! I'm super excited to take this "1000 Words of Summer" challenge on a familiar road trip. An extra bonus is I'll get to hang out with my other brother, Robert, in St. Louis and maybe even meet up with a writer friend or two!

Hope to see y'all soon. In the meantime, happy writing!