Day 66 of my 70-day writing challenge!
Hello, my favourite MsBrowns book lovers!
It’s NotesOnDawn here, back with another dispatch from my 70-day writing challenge. We are "AllAboutBooks" on this site, and for the next couple of months, I’m deep in the weeds of making one.
Today’s check-in is Day 66/70—which, for those following along, means we are on Day Five of this countdown to finish my short story collection by 2025. The vibe today is very much ☕️✍🏻🍁. The coffee is strong, the notebook is open, and the autumn-in-November feeling is fuelling the mood.
Today was a milestone. Not because I wrote thousands of words. Not because I "cracked" the plot of my entire collection. It was a milestone because, as I mentioned on my Instagram, today was the first day where this felt real. It was the first day where sitting down to write felt less like a monumental, muscle-straining effort and more like a quiet, settled part of my routine.
And in the long, exhausting marathon of balancing a creative life with a 9-to-5 job, that feeling—the feeling of a new habit finally clicking into place—is perhaps the biggest victory of all.
The Quiet Victory of Routine
The first few days of any challenge are pure adrenaline and novelty. Day 1 (70/70) was all about the "archaeological dig" of sorting out my notes. Day 2 (69/70) was about settling into my analogue process, the joy of the pen and paper.
But then come Days 3 and 4. The days where the novelty has worn off, but the habit isn't yet formed. These are the days I’ve failed in the past. They are the days where the 9-to-5 feels all-consuming, and the idea of opening the notebook at 8 PM feels like torture.
Today, Day 5, was different. The resistance was lower. I didn't have to have a 20-minute internal debate. I just... did it. I made the coffee, I sat at my desk, and I opened the book. It was nice. It felt normal.
This is the "measured and honest" process I've been craving. The glamorous side of the #writingcommunity is the finished book, the aesthetic Reels, the big "I'm a published author" announcement. But the unglamorous, 99% of the work is this: just showing up on Day 5, when no one is watching, and doing the work.
This is my 'Experience', I can offer you: The secret to building a writing routine isn't a magic-bullet prompt or a new piece of software. It's just surviving the dip. It's pushing through the first few days of resistance until you reach a morning where it just feels... easy.
Unearthing the Dissertation: A Ghost from 2022
So, what was I working on in this newfound routine?
I’m working on a piece of writing that is very, very close to my heart. And, as I mentioned in my caption, it’s a story that actually comes from one of the original pieces I submitted for my dissertation.
Yes, this idea is an academic ghost. I have formally studied this. I have a degree in this. And revisiting that work now is a truly wild experience.
It’s a strange and humbling thing to read your own writing from years ago, especially writing that was done in an academic setting. There's an immediate, full-body cringe. The prose! The earnestness! The desperate attempt to sound "literary"!
But once the cringe subsides, something else emerges: recognition.
The story I'm working on now is, as I said, "completely different" from that dissertation piece. The comparison feels strange. I am a different writer. I’ve lived three more years, worked a demanding job, read hundreds more books. My "voice" is no longer the strained, academic one of my early twenties. It's quieter, more confident, and (I hope) much better.
And yet... the themes are the same. The spark, the central "what if," is still there. My dissertation-era self had a good idea, but she didn’t have the technical skill, or the life experience, to pull it off. She had the "what," but not the "how."
This is a profound lesson for every writer, and it's one I'm taking to heart during this challenge: Never throw your ideas away. That "cringe" story you wrote five years ago? It’s not a failure. It’s a seed. You might just need to let the soil of your own life and skill set enrich itself for a few years before that seed can finally, properly grow.
That old dissertation isn't a ghost to be exorcised; it's a foundation to be built upon.
The Magic of Transcribing: Why "Admin" is "Editing"
Today’s session was not a huge burst of new words. As I noted, "not that much writing." Instead, my main activity was transcribing.
In my last post, I talked about my love for writing by hand in notebooks. This is the messy, non-linear, "idea-capture" phase. But at some point, those ideas need to be wrangled. They need to be brought out of the private, chaotic notebook and into a more linear, structured form.
This is where transcribing comes in. I am painstakingly re-typing (or re-writing into a "master" document) my handwritten notes.
This sounds like admin. It sounds like boring, secretarial data entry. But I am telling you, as a writer, it is one of the most powerful creative tools in my arsenal.
Transcribing is editing. It's the first, most intuitive filter for your work. Here is what's happening in my brain as I do it (my 'Expertise' on the process):
It Forces a "Slow Read": You cannot transcribe without reading every single word. You are forced to confront that clunky sentence, that bit of dialogue that sounded great in your head but looks terrible on the page. Unlike a quick skim-read, transcribing forces a deliberate, slow, and mindful engagement with your own text.
It's an Automatic "Quality Filter": When I'm transcribing, I find I automatically "fix" things. My brain and fingers just do it. A weak verb becomes a strong one. A long, rambling sentence gets tightened. And sometimes... I'll get to a whole paragraph, and my fingers will just stop. I'll realise that this entire section is waffle. It doesn't serve the story. And I simply... don't transcribe it. It's the most painless form of cutting your darlings.
It "Solidifies" the Plot (as I said!): This is the most important part. As I re-type, I am re-living the story. I am seeing the connections. In the original notebook, two scenes might be 40 pages apart. When I transcribe them one after the other, I see the new, invisible thread that connects them. The act of bringing them together in one place creates the plot. It’s like watching a Polaroid develop. The ideas were there, but the transcribing is the chemical process that brings them into sharp focus.
So, while it looks like I'm just typing, I'm actually building the story, layer by layer. It's the "good stuff cooking up," as I said. It’s the slow-simmer that develops the flavour, not the fast, high-heat sear of a "word vomit" sprint.
The Theme: What Happens to a Body Left to Grow?
This brings me to the story itself. The magical realism and surrealism.
The themes I'm wrestling with now are the exact same ones I was wrestling with in my dissertation: "themes of nature and what it looks like out of its confinement's."
But I think I have a better way to explain it now. The real question I’m asking in this story is: "What happens to a body that is left to grow?"
This is the core of the magical realism I love to write. It’s taking a simple, biological-sounding premise and pushing it into the surreal. We are bodies left to grow. We are all nature, in a way. But our society, our jobs, our routines (even our 9-to-5s) are a form of "confinement." We prune ourselves to be acceptable, to fit into our designated pots.
What happens if you don't? What happens if a person, or a thing, or a feeling, just... grows? Unchecked? Without rules?
What does that look like? Does a body grow roots? Does it sprout leaves? Does it grow too big for the house, pushing through the plaster and floorboards? Does it become something monstrous, or beautiful, or both?
This theme is so potent for me right now because it's a metaphor for the creative process itself. My dissertation story was "confined." It was in the pot of academia, of my own inexperience.
This 70-day challenge is me taking that story, and my own creativity, "out of its confinement's." I am letting this collection grow wild. I'm letting my own process (the handwriting, the "slow" transcribing) be what it wants to be, not what I think it should be.
I'm letting my own creative body grow, and I'm excited, and a little scared, to see what shape it takes.
Day 66/70 (Day 5) is done. The routine feels good. The ideas feel solid.
Onto the next days!
Thank you for following along on this journey. It’s so much more encouraging to know the MsBrowns family is on the other side of this screen.
NotesOnDawn