Hundred

Writing · 100 days · Hundred

  1. What the hundred days look like
  2. A question before you start
  3. Join the next hundred days

Unfinished draft · stalled past the middle

The draft that stopped at chapter eleven

You know the shape of it. Excitement carried the first act, the middle went slow, and at some point the file stopped being opened. No decision was ever made about that. This is a hundred days of ordinary sessions, logged where other people see them.

the shape of it

What a hundred days tends to look like

entry 1

Calibration. Most people set tasks twice as large as the day can hold and spend the first week shrinking them.

Day 1–10

Calibration. Most people set tasks twice as large as the day can hold and spend the first week shrinking them.

Day 45

The stretch where your earlier drafts died. The difference is that a stall now gets written down on the day it happens.

Day 100

A hundred logged days on one manuscript. What state it is in is yours to judge; the days themselves are on the record.

Every stalled draft stalls the same way

why the middle kills drafts

The energy that started it does not reach the middleThe opening chapters wrote themselves on enthusiasm. Enthusiasm is poor fuel for chapter fourteen, and nothing replaced it.
There is a folder of these alreadyThree chapters here, half a book there. Each one was going to be the one you finished, and each one ended without anybody noticing.
Nobody is expecting pages from youNo editor, no deadline, no reader waiting. Stopping costs nothing today, which is exactly why it keeps happening.

What a hundred days tends to look like

Calibration. Most people set tasks twice as large as the day can hold and spend the first week shrinking them.

gallery

The desk, the page, the hour

1 of 5

Three tasks in the morning, one report at night

how it runs

01 Name the three things before you open the file Written in the morning, small enough to survive a bad day. Deciding in advance is most of what gets you into the chair later.
02 Close the day in writing Two lines on what moved and what did not. A hundred of them is a record of a manuscript being worked on rather than remembered.
03 Report where other people report Everyone around you is on their own hundred days. Their logs sit next to yours, so a silent week stops being private.

before you sign up

Reasonable questions

Do you read or edit my manuscript?

No. Nobody here sees your pages. What is shared is the daily report: what you set out to do and what happened.

Will I finish the book in a hundred days?

We cannot promise that and we do not. The programme puts a structure on a hundred days. The length and the state of your draft stay yours.

What if I miss a day?

Write it in the report and take the next one. Days you showed up are what get counted, not an unbroken chain.

Can I use it for a rewrite rather than a first draft?

Yes. The three tasks are whatever moves the manuscript — replotting, cutting, restructuring.

When does it start?

Groups start on a fixed date, so a hundred days means the same hundred days for everyone. Leave an email and we send the date.

Three tasks each morning. One report each night. A hundred days of writing.

The next hundred days start on a fixed date

Leave an email and we will write when the group opens. Nothing is charged on this page.

One email, when the next hundred days open.

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