The Scary Freedom of Ten Minutes a Day: A 100 Day Project Update

When I decided to do the #100dayproject at the end of January, I wanted to make it as easy as possible, though that’s not really my nature. I like big challenges. I like going all in. But I knew if I did something too big this year, it would likely crush me.

So, I kept my ideas small, then made them even smaller. The idea I came up with—time lapse videos of me freewriting for ten minutes a day—was the simplest thing I could think of. It required me to write (which was my goal), but not to have to share my writing regularly (which removed a lot of pressure). I could write privately and as badly as I wanted without having to then circle back, polish it up, and post it.

Each day, I make my video while I write, give it a quick edit, then post it in my Instagram stories and I’m done. It’s almost too easy, and I feel that. I often wonder if what I’m doing matters or if it’s simply a vanity exercise. But I remind myself that it doesn’t matter out there as much as it matters in here.

I’m writing every day for ten minutes. And that matters to me.

How’s it been going?

If I’d been keeping a journal of my #100dayproject, this is what it would look like:

Days 1-8: This feels good. I’m writing every day. I love this.

Days 9-14: Family emergency. Still writing but also processing so much of what’s happening. Grateful to get a lot of things down.

Days 15-25: I’m exhausted. I don’t know what I’m doing. I just want to lie down.

But I’ve been plugging away, putting in at least ten minutes, but some days up to two hours of writing. In twenty-five days, I’ve written nearly 22,000 words and spent more than twelve hours writing.

Thankfully, I get messages almost every day from people cheering me on. I get other messages asking me exactly what I’m doing. What am I writing? What’s my process? What software am I using?

These are good questions, ones that I’ve lost sight of while I quickly make and post my videos. Here’s a fifteen-second video, but what exactly is going on? I forget that viewers are only seeing a small fraction of the process.

Not only that, but I haven’t written much in public since this project started twenty-five days ago. I posted twice on my blog—one that was a ten-minute writing exercise and the other that took several days and hundreds of unused words to finally figure out what I wanted to say—and four times in my Instagram feed. That’s it.

My family emergency ate up a week and a half of February, and the emotional residue has lingered, leaving me dog-tired and weary. It’s a situation that’s still unresolved and the uncertainty of it hangs in the air. Most of the words I’ve written have been about that, getting down my raw thoughts in real time.

I don’t have a plan. I don’t know where it’s going. I only know I’m writing every day.

The Mosaic Method

A few years ago, I learned about a writing technique called the mosaic method from The INFJ Writer. It’s a non-linear way to write about your memories where you write whatever comes to mind in a free, associative way, like fractured pieces of glass or clay. Later, as you rewrite and revise, you assemble all of the pieces like you would a mosaic, rearranging and fitting them together in a pleasing way.

I used this technique two years ago when I was working on a memoir that I’ve since put away because it wasn’t the right time. I’d think about my childhood, then write whatever came out without thinking too much about timelines. The goal was to amass raw material that I could organize and revise later.

That’s kind of how I see this #100dayproject, but I don’t have a specific topic. I’m simply writing off the top of my head, spontaneously and without any plan, trying to land somewhere between Natalie Goldberg’s notebook-keeping advice in Writing Down the Bones and Jenny Slate’s approach of writing whatever is on your mind.

This is a very scary and freeing way to write.

Scary because you don’t know what you’re doing.

Freeing because you don’t have to worry about what you’re doing.

It’s leaning into that creative, right-brained, intuitive side while trusting that the logical, left-brained, practical side will make sense of it later. Christian McEwan writes about this in World Enough & Time:

“It sounds simple enough. But for the rational, practical part of ourselves, such ‘thinking with the abdomen’ can seem terrifying. We are down in the mud, shoveling, uncertain. Our comfortable identities have been torn away. We are chipping blindly at the hard rockface, reaching out to the unknown and the unborn. Allowing time to listen, to slow down, to surrender, can feel like a tremendous waste of time.”

Something Like a Plan

As for the nuts and bolts: I’m writing in a Word document, creating breaks between each day’s writing. I keep a monthly spreadsheet where I track how many words I’ve written every day, how long I wrote, what I worked on, and how it felt. When I finish a writing session, I fill out the spreadsheet, which creates a satisfying ending ritual, especially as I see the totals increase through the month.

Once the project is over, my plan is based on Goldberg’s advice. She fills a notebook every month, lets it sit for a week, then rereads, plucking out the gold. After a hundred days, I plan to print everything out, let it rest, then read through it. I’ll keep what seems good and cut the rest, then look for themes. (I’m sure I’ll use another spreadsheet. I enjoy the data-tracking, analytical part of this and just heard Patrice Gopo talk about doing something similar with her work.)

After analyzing, I’ll pull what I’m keeping to into Scrivener and let the work start to take shape. There, I can create individual documents that are still part of the whole project, so those could become essays to submit later or chapters for a book, if that’s what this becomes.

For now, I’m keeping my head down and getting words on the page. People always say that writing begets more writing, which I’m realizing more and more is true. The more I write, the more I want to write and the more ideas I have. It’s that intersection between preparation and inspiration, laying the groundwork of habit so when the ideas come, I’m ready.

There’s still seventy-five more days to go. And I’m here for it all. I’m ready.