90 Days of Creativity
90 Days of Creativity
I recently completed a self-imposed challenge that might be one of my favorite challenges I've ever done: 90 Days of Creativity. Inspired by a fitness challenge my wife and I did earlier this year called 75 Hard, what doing 75 Hard taught both of us is that we had a lot more energy and time in our day than we previously thought. After taking like a month and a half off after completely 75 Hard we both tailored our own versions of it to fit our personal goals. Mine was creativity.
I went into the challenge with a simple motivating idea: I wanted to pretend that I had reached my level of "success" as an author that I am comfortable with, so I told myself "You just wrote a book that's been successful in some niche reading circles. You don't make enough money from writing to sustain yourself full time, and you don't expect to ever become a full time author, but you want to keep this flywheel going and the feedback is motivating you to not only write more, but read, and participate in the community more. What do you do every day to fuel that fire?" I broke it down into six major habits to do every day, and I mean every day. They are:
- Work on my work in progress (WIP) every day for 45 minutes or more, even if it's just thinking about it in front of my computer on days that I don't have energy to write.
- Work on anything else creative every day for 45 minutes. Could be a short story, a newsletter, an admin hour for my creative life, or even a second 45 minute session for my WIP if I'm really feeling it.
- Read fiction for 30+ minutes a day.
- Read a few pages from a book on craft each day.
- Contribute to the reading community each day. This can be making a book suggestion on reddit, posting a story on Instagram that is reading related, writing & submitting a short story on /r/WritingPrompts, or writing a review on GoodReads.
- Contribute to the writing community each day. From shouting out authors I love on social media, to DMing smaller authors to let them know that I enjoy their work, or posting writing advice on Bluesky or Reddit.
The first few weeks were hard but after a while it started to feel like a flywheel that I did not want to stop. Thanks to this challenge I accomplished a lot of creative goals from getting the motivation to self-publish my second book, to (finally) updating my website, to making genuine connections with other authors both in person and online. Overall it made me appreciate the reading and writing communities and I felt proud to be a part of them.
After 90 days I decided to rest and gave myself 5 days to not think about it. During those 5 days my flywheel was still spinning and I was itching to get back on it. Currently I'm in the process of revising the flywheel to be a bit more sustainable since I was feeling some fatigue (but not burnout!) by the end, especially as life gets busier with the upcoming holidays. But I know for sure that I'm going to keep that flywheel spinning!
If this challenge interests you I encourage you to try your own variation. It doesn't have to be for 90 days, it can be just a week or two, and feel free to tailor it to fit your lifestyle and goals. You can learn a lot about yourself with a simple self-imposed challenge.
What’s Happening?
Work(s) in Progress
If you've been following me on social media over the past few months you'd probably seen me talk a lot about my current book project under the working title Beached Horizon. It is by far the largest project I've ever worked on, currently sitting at 112k words, with an estimate final word count of 140k to 180k words (for comparison: The Novel Killer is only at 20k words, and The Gyroscope Curse! (Part 1) is just short of 60k words). It's still a long ways out and if things go as I expect, I hope to have the first draft finished by January or February next year. I have no idea how long editing & revision is going to take for a project this size so I'm not going to make any promises on release date (or release year for that matter), but I just wanted you all to know that I am working on something and it's something big, and a lot different than the satire found in my previous two books.
I also just finished editing a short story I wrote October. I'm planning on writing and editing one short story a month if my schedule allows. I'm not sure on my release strategy yet, but when they're out I'll be sure to link to where you can read them! (These will be higher quality short-stories than those found in my Flash Fiction section below. Since I'm taking more time to plan, edit, and revise them). The working title (and likely final title) of this one is The First 10^21 Seconds.
New Release: Eleanor & Dale in... The Gyroscope Curse! (Part 1)
If you're subscribed here you probably already know about my latest book, Eleanor & Dale in... The Gyroscope Curse! (Part 1), but if not then let me introduce you to my latest book: Eleanor & Dale in... The Gyroscope Curse! (Part 1) a road-trip buddy-comedy following Eleanor, a horror movie enthusiast who can't get enough of the genre, and Dale, a scaredy-cat FBI agent who just so happened to have been spying on her internet activity the moment she watched a cursed video that brings movie horror monsters to life. Now the two need to take a horror-themed roadtrip to get to the bottom of the curse. For fans of meta-humor and campy horror movies. Available on Amazon, or on my writing subreddit for free!
Flash Fiction / One-and-Done Stories
On Fridays where I can make the time I'll usually set aside 1 to 2 hours to churn out a one-and-done flash fiction response to a prompt on /r/WritingPrompts, when I then resubmit to my writing subreddit, /r/QuadrantNine. Below are the ones I've written this month. These are one-and-done responses with minimal editing so I apologize for any errors.
- Magic Number - A psychedelic grim-dark Cronenberg-esque story about a young woman named Molly, empowered by a shapeshifting device known as the WEAPON, taking revenge against Clair-Lune, a drug kingpin who has sedated the population with a reality warping street drug called Magic Number. Honestly, I love this story so much that I want to expand it into a whole book, but I'm not making any promises.
- The Only Thing Worse than the Code Department - A part of my eldritch-horror-comedy series, The Adventures of Dar'goth, the Old God of Madness has relocated his base of operations to the city's suburbs to escape the red-tape of the code department that constantly blocked any progress in his plan to begin the March of Madness. Little did he know that HSAs are way worse than the code department.
- Calibration - Desperate for money, Robert volunteered to be the first human to be cloned, ever. However, little did he know that the scientists involved were attempting to clone more than just his body. Today he's been brought in to help calibrate the psyche of his doppleganger, and it's not afraid of spilling any of his dark secrets and desires.
Cool Things I Love
Books
Below is a list of all the book I've read this month and loved.
- Outline by Rachel Cusk - I will preface with stating that this book isn't for everyone, but it is one of my favorite books I've read all year. If you enjoy literary-style books written in a stream of consciousness manner then you might enjoy this book. It's a slice-of-life story about an British author traveling to Greece and during her stay people just seem compelled to unload their life's woes upon her. I loved it, but if you're not a fan of literary fiction or an author looking for inspiration, then I wouldn't recommend Outline. It is a part of a trilogy, so expect future newsletters to have the sequels recommended.
- We Will Speak Again of the Red Tower by Various Authors - As a fan of the "weird fiction" genre I'm surprised that I never heard of the short story The Red Tower by Thomas Ligotti (which you can read for free here). It's best to go in blind like I did. We Will Speak Again is an unofficial anthology collection expanding on the premise in the original story. Wonderfully well done and I love seeing fans come together to celebrate something they love. You can learn more about the project along of where to get the book for free in this reddit post.
- Fever Dream by Samanta Schweblin - Originally called Rescue Distance in Spanish (which I like more, but only after reading the book. Fever Dream is definitely more marketable) I have never read a book like this before and was completely blown away by the story and its execution. I seriously cannot stop thinking about this book and the best way is to go in completely blind like I did. It's a short read at only about 2 hours and can be finished in an afternoon. My only regret is that I didn't read it in one sitting but over the course of three nights, but I think it's best experienced in one sitting if you have the time.
Random Quote
A Question For You…
What's a personal challenge you've done that completely changed your life for the better? And what did you take from it after it ended that you still keep with you?
That's it!
Thank you for reading this edition of Dispatches from Quadrant Nine. See you in two weeks for another edition! For more, you can check out my website JonathanKWebb.com follow me on Substack, Instagram, BlueSky, and Reddit. I also have a small subreddit dedicated to discussing all my writing over at /r/QuadrantNine that you can subscribe to.
See you in the next edition!