80 days and 100 words

My dear cousin Maria posted something that I have been mulling over in my head for the past week. Did you realize that we are now looking at the last 80 days of this decade? Give or take a few, but still, the point remains that in a few short months, we will all be trying to remember to write 2020 instead of 2019. This beginning of a new decade forces us to come to the point of comparison where we will no doubt take stock of how 2010 is ten years ago, so we can appreciate where we were then and how far we have come. I understand that the calendar is a social construct that marks the passage of time in a somewhat arbitrary way. I mean, after all, January 1st is just another day, but yet we desire to continue to move forward and this propels us as a species to try to do better, faster before the clock stops ticking.

Now for those of us who had a small heart attack when I pointed out the fact, as it was pointed out to me, the end of another decade is nigh, the good news is there's still time in 2019. 

Here's the cool part. Instead of starting to try to reach out goals beginning on January 1st, wouldn't it be awesome if we look at it as a running start? We can move further towards our goals or perhaps further distance ourselves from the starting point of 2010 in these last 80 days. 

Now that we have that to chew on let's talk about the power of 100. Life is busy, and those of us writers always get asked the fateful question, "When do you have time to write??? I wish I had that kind of time!" This question usually results in a burst of nervous laughter and self-effacing joke because we don't have any more time, but copious amounts of guilt over how much more we *should* be writing. 

Here's the thing. The hard part, as with any job or task, is getting started, so I would like to propose the 100 words challenge. The idea is this: If we sit down and write 100 words every day, we will likely continue to write well past the daily threshold, pushing us further down towards our goals. There have been authors who have finished entire novels 100 words a day, which, if you're counting, would only take three years. Not bad for literally less than five minutes a day. Some of those novels have gone onto become bestsellers. All of us can commit to 100 words a day. Don't believe me? Check out this blogpost. 

Here's to the last 80 days! I'll be tackling mine 100 words a day at a time.

Onward!

Kathryn