Small Can Be BIG

Lesson 9 of 10 from the 200 Words-a-Day Challenge

In July 2023, I reluctantly accepted a challenge issued by

☕ KimBoo York

to write—and share—at least 200 words a day. Word count wasn’t the point; attempting to break through my resistance to sharing my writing was.

This small daily task taught me a lot about myself, my creativity, and my writing practice. So I decided to also share my top ten lessons learned from the challenge in the hopes they’ll support you and your practice as well.

Following the pattern and the practice of the month-long challenge, I’m delivering these 10 lessons learned as micro-essays of at least 200 words.

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Small Can Be BIG

For years, I used writing as a reward for when I finished my other “work” and, too often, I wouldn’t write because I had “only” an hour or a half-hour or less. I’d bought into an idea (whose? from where? I do not know) that I needed great swaths of time to create anything meaningful…to get down lots of words.

Add to that the idea that “real” writers MUST write every single day—something impractical in most of our lives—and I conjured plenty of excuses for not writing. Too much time, too often, too many words. How could I possibly do that?

During the July challenge, my minimum daily target was a mere 200 words, intentionally low bar. I accomplished that, some days more easily (and with more words) than others, for 31 straight days. No matter what. It didn’t feel onerous or scary at all. By the end of the month, I’d written more than 6,200 new words.

You probably know that old joke about eating an elephant “one bite at a time.” It seems silly on hearing it, but there’s a profound truth about the monumental power of small, consistent effort. I’m now a fan of tiny, incremental targets.

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Lesson #9 of 10

Tiny tasks repeated often yield significant results. Doing just a little, regularly (which doesn’t have to be daily), can take us further faster than waiting for long, uninterrupted blocks of writing time that rarely come.

Like what you see so far in Gina’s Quill? Stick around to read more, including upcoming fiction and my non-fiction book The Creativity Quest.