You might remember a month ago I decided to go for a Milwordy. I did a whole post about it. For anyone who doesn’t know, a Milwordy is when you try to write a million words in a year. 

I do this sort of thing sometimes. I hear about some fancy new challenge online and it just sounds fun. I can make a little chart and track my progress. I can watch my numbers go up like on a video game. It’s a good time. 

It’s also, like, instant gratification for me. If I have one complaint about writing, it’s that gratification is at a minimum. Writing books takes time. Writing short stories take time. Writing a damned poem can take time. And getting any of that work published? Don’t get me started. Years, you guys. Years. For someone like me, gratification is so important. (Not that kind, you pervert.) I need to feel like I’m accomplishing something. Word counts are a great way to feel that way. Watching them pile up is great for me.

Of course, I wanted to do a Milwordy. Especially right now, when I’m working on a bunch of projects that all need a little progress every day. Yes, a little progress adds up, but not near fast enough for me. A daily word count that includes all my little projects and any freewriting I do?

Hell yes, sign me up.

After trying for a whole month, I’ve decided that a Milwordy doesn’t serve me at all and I’m done trying. 

Now, a quick disclaimer. Just because something doesn’t serve me doesn’t mean it won’t serve you. There are many people for who a Milwordy goal is fantastic. And it’s great! Good for you, in the most honest way possible. 

I’m also not advocating for quitting things too soon or because you don’t like a challenge. Sometimes challenges are good. Sometimes a thing will serve you very well if you give it some time to exist in your life. Even if at first it serves you like a cannon in the gut. 

But if we all stuck with everything, some of us would have screwed our lives up. Some of us would be in abusive marriages, shitty jobs, poorly chosen college majors.

That being said, I wanted to go through some reasons I’ve decided not to do a Milwordy for a few reasons. One, because I’d hate for you to think I’m just a big quitter. Two, because I hope that if you’re struggling with whether or not you should keep at something, this will help you make the best decision for you.

To start with, a million words is sort of an arbitrary number. I mean, it’s a beautiful number. It’s a nice big, round number and I love it. But when we’re talking about a million words as a word count for a year it doesn’t work. It’s not the same as, for instance, Nanowrimo. That’s 50,000 words in a month, the minimum required word count to be considered a novel. That being said, let’s do some math together. Let’s say an author writes a novel in a year at 50,000 words. Let’s say she also writes a short story every month at about 2,000 words and maybe two or three blog posts or articles a week at 1,000 words each. To be fair, let’s assume that same author does three pages of free writing a day, maybe a page of journaling. Now, a rough estimate of that word count is 300 words a page. That’s roughly 440,000 words in a year. Not even half of the Milwordy goal and that’s a shit ton of writing. Want to know how I know? That’s roughly how much I write in a year. And if you want to know how I figured out those rough estimates, keep reading. We’re going to get into that.

Yes, achieving a Milwordy is a massive goal, and it should require you to stretch and work hard. But there’s achievable goals and stupid goals. More than doubling what’s honestly already sort of a lot of writing comes down to personal abuse. 

I could probably do it, though. I’m not bragging, I probably could write a million words in a year. I wouldn’t be taking any days off, and I’d probably get even fatter than I am now. But I could write a million words. 

L.Ron Hubbard wrote a lot. A stupid scary amount. Most of it’s hot garbage. Like, bad. Sit down and read some of his stuff, it’s hideous. Hubbard was able to do that because he focused on quantity, not quality. If I wrote a million words in a year, it would take me another three years to edit, polish and publish all of it. And by that time I’d probably be sick of the whole thing. Or, let’s face it, I’d have lost my notebooks.

Let’s talk about notes now. I, like many writers, take a lot of notes. I take notes while I’m watching movies to review, when I do research for an upcoming project, or just sorting my thoughts out on the page. But notes don’t necessarily take a lot of words. I generally keep my notes pretty short, as they’re just there to jog my memory later. So, when I dreamed of pages and pages of notes filling up my word count every week, I was not considering reality. This Milwordy goal was encouraging me to expand notes unnecessarily, wasting time. I don’t have a lot of time to waste.

Now, I’d like to go back to something we talked about earlier. I have some weirdly specific numbers regarding my writing. For much of my work, my trusty computer does all the counting for me. But I do a lot of writing on paper. And that meant I had to count that by hand. 

Okay, so I didn’t count every word. I counted the words on 100 lines and figured out the average. Which works well if I’m writing out a full line.

Do you have any idea how much time it takes to count all that? Again, time I don’t have to waste. It’s one thing when I’m doing Nanowrimo, counting out words in a rough draft for a month. Doing that for a whole year? No way, Man. I’m still having PTSD from it. Try writing out several pages of nightmare details at three in the morning. Then, count it the next day. See how happy you are about it. 

Now, I can’t emphasize enough that some people benefit from doing a Milwordy. If you’re one of those people I want to hear about it. Please let us know in the comments below. But now it’s time for me to set this goal aside and focus on what’s important.

Telling stories. 

Disney +. Come for Hamilton, stay for the ridiculous amount of nostalgia. This isn’t sponsored, it’s just literally what happened to me in July. 

We’re still staying home more than we used to because people don’t want to wear their damned masks and I have a husband who’s high risk. (Seriously, I want to be understanding and see all sides of this. But people are dying. Wear a mask, wash your hands, keep your hands off your damned face.)

Since we have nothing to do, we’ve been watching a lot of old Disney movies the husband didn’t see when he was a kid. I don’t mean old like Davey Crockett. I mean like Oliver and Company, and The Hunchback of Notre Dame. Stuff that was around when I was a kid. Stuff I loved when I was a kid. 

Like everything else, I can’t just watch and experience something. I’ve got to take a lesson from it. Then, I have to share it with you. So here are five reasons why I think you should all watch old Disney movies. 

Unexpected adult jokes

This is kind of an open secret, but I still love it. I’m not talking about the easter egg things like the penis on the cover of Little Mermaid or the word sex sprawled out in leaves in Lion King. These are just good old fashioned dirty jokes. Like in Beauty and the Beast. There’s a part on Gaston’s song when he says that every last inch of him is covered in hair. And this gross asshole looks right at the audience and winks!

The animators knew what they were doing. 

The music is better than you remember

Before Let it Go got played to death, it was a pretty good song. Disney movies have always had songs that kids love to sing along to. But here’s a secret. The song your mom wanted to kill you for singing on repeat probably overshadowed some damn good music. Take God Help the Outcast from Hunchback of Notre Dame. That song makes me cry.

And I know it’s a bit more modern, but the whole soundtrack for Tarzan is just astounding. I mean, it is Phil Collins, so I suppose that shouldn’t be surprised. 

So is the artwork

We were watching The Rescuers, and I kept pausing to go on about the artwork. How you could see the brushstrokes. How some scenes looked like living paintings. How adorable yet intelligent the mice were drawn. 

This is the shit my husband puts up with, you guys. 

But the artwork is amazing. I know that we’re quite accustomed to getting movies a lot faster these days with computer animation. I’m not saying art can’t be made on a computer, it totally can. But there’s something about a hand-drawn movie. I mean, it took a lot longer. The Hydra scene from Hercules alone took over a year.

But my goodness, it’s astounding. It deserves to be appreciated. 

A million little writing lessons

Look, I’m not going to sit here and defend every bit of writing in a Disney movie. Much of it is lazy, pure garbage, or outright stolen from other sources. (Looking at you, Kimba.)

But it’s not all bad. For instance, in watching these old movies I’ve noticed that a decent amount of protagonists are kind of assholes. They’re still good people, they’re just dicks. Like Basil, the great mouse detective. Or the Beast. They’re not nice people. They’re not selfless, kind, tactful. 

But they’re still good. That’s the thing about people, they have layers. It would be nice to see that more often.

Sometimes you need to step back into your childhood

Finally, sometimes it’s nice to just be a little kid again. Just chill out and watch a kid’s

movie.

Here’s the thing, the world is heavy right now. I don’t need to tell you that. And a lot of my day is spent either trying to figure out what I can do to make things better or being just damned depressed about what’s happening. 

That’s not likely to end anytime soon. There’s never been a moment in my life where it’s more important to fight the good fight every damned day. And while I’m never going to be one to turn off the news, sometimes we do need to take a break from it. 

Take breaks how you need to. Take care of yourself and your mental health. Stopping the horrible things happening in our world doesn’t end with the election in November. And if watching some old Disney movies helps us keep fighting, then let’s all do that. 

If you’re looking for ways to help, here’s just a few things you can do.

1. Wear your damned mask.

2. Donate to foundations working for us, like the ACLU or Black Lives Matter. 

3. Donate to charities that are stressed right now, like Immigrant Families Together. 

4. Download the Resist app and use it to let your local officials know where you stand on the issues. 

5. Register to vote, and make sure everyone you know registers too.

6. If you’re healthy and able, volunteer to work at polls this election day.

7. Give everyone, including yourself, grace. Everyone’s going through hell right now. We’re only getting through it if we stick together. 

Artwork for this post came from IMDB.

Today’s cover art is from Karolina Grabowska.

I spend a lot of time on Youtube. Honestly, it’s the majority of the video content I consume every day. News, cat videos, crafting and recipes, cat videos, music, science experiments, cat videos and fennec fox videos. You know, the usual. Oh, and competitive marble racing. Because that’s a thing. I learn all sorts of things from youtube, find meditations and yoga videos, and some really good ambient sounds to write to.

So why the hell did it take me so long to figure out Booktube is a thing? 

I’m falling into a rabbit hole of people talking about books! New books, mostly. Fantasy books, science fiction, nonfiction, romance novels. Not that I read that last one but to each their own. These people have such a love for reading, I’ve found my people. Talk about bookshelf envy! The color-coded shelves covered in fairy lights and nerdy figurines make me drool. Most of my books are second-hand paperbacks that look like they’ve been carried around in backpacks and dog eared for decades. Because most of them have.

But enough about the reasons I’ve fallen in love with Booktube. Here are -?- reasons why you should be watching Booktube too. Especially if you’re a writer.

It’s an easy way to keep up with trends

We all know it’s a stupid idea to write to trends. It’s a waste of time, honestly. There’s no way you can write, edit, promote and publish a book in time to catch up with a current trend. 

That doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea to understand the trends. If you’re in the field, you need to know what’s going on in the field. 

But there’s so much to do as a writer. Advertising, editing, social media and doing the occasional bit of writing will quickly take up your day. I mean, if you even have a whole day to do writing things. Not like you have cleaning, cooking, day jobs, caring for family members and pets to do on top of all that. So now I’m expecting you to add keeping up with the hundreds of books that are released every week? 

Soon I’ll be making a list of easy ways to keep up with the publishing industry. I say soon because I need to figure it out myself first.

Booktube is on that list, though. It’s something I can do while my hands are busy. It’s also something I can do when I’m too tired to read another word. And honestly, those are the easiest things to keep up with. Why do you think I’ve been reviewing podcasts on Haunted MTL? But seriously, folks. Any way I can get information into me while doing other things is good.

It’s a great way to support other writers

While many books on Booktube are traditionally published, many aren’t. Indie books and books from indie publishers are shown on Booktube. In fact, given the relative popularity of Booktube over other places we learn about new books, it’s a great way to get the word out. Honestly, my to-read list has ballooned since watching these. Like I needed more books to read. But anything that encourages people to read more books is something I’m behind.

Learn about books you might never hear about otherwise

Yes, I know I was complaining about having too many books to read just like a sentence ago. But that’s the best problem to have. I honestly had never heard of some of these books. But I’m excited that I know about them. I’m going to enjoy reading them. And I have excited girls in big glasses on Booktube to thank for that.

Feel inspired by people who love books

And let’s talk about these girls. Sorry if that feels very specific, but I have yet to see a male Booktuber. We’ll get to that in a moment.

Here’s the thing, though. There are times when being an author is fucking depressing. I am so sick and tired of being surrounded by people who say that they don’t have time to read. They aren’t really big book readers. They’re just too busy. 

Were you too busy to watch hours of Netflix? I don’t freaking think so!

Because of this, Booktube is therapeutic. I loved seeing all of these people, my age and younger, obsessed with books. I love seeing people fangirl and fanboy over authors and novels. Talking about crushes on fictional characters, gushing over sequels from their favorite authors, showing off stacks of new books. I love these people.

So now I need to ask you a favor. I watch two Booktubers regularly. They’re both British women with glasses. I’d like to broaden my viewing. If you’re a fan of a Booktuber, please leave their information in the comments. If you are a Booktuber, by all means, leave a link. I will watch you.

Today’s beautiful cover image is from Eric Perlin.

For those of you who don’t wear a bra, stick with me. This is going to be relevant to you, too.

For those of you who do wear a bra, you’ve probably all been where I was Sunday night. 

It was a long day, and I was so ready to just chill and watch some Buffy with a White Claw. (I’m not doing processed sugar right now.)

But when I plopped down on my chair, I felt something snap under my shirt. 

I know that feeling. Boy, do I know it. It’s the sickening crack of the underwire of my bra snapping in two.

If you wear bras then you know, they’re damned expensive. So I wait as long as possible before buying new ones. Consequently, this was one of only two bras I owned as of Sunday night.

A large purchase I’d been putting off had now become an emergency. An expensive one at that.

This required me to take some money out of my emergency fund. 

Okay, we’re done talking about my underwear now. 

Everyone should have an emergency fund of at least $1,000. It’s Dave Ramsey’s first baby step for a reason. And it is damned hard. 

It’s not hard because I have expensive tastes. 

It’s not hard because I don’t have self-control.

It’s not hard because I don’t have a full-time job.

It’s not hard because I have some sort of expensive addiction like cigarettes or Warhammer.

It’s because surviving has become too damn difficult. 

Let me be really clear. I am a Millennial and I don’t want to hear about millennials being too soft. Everyone is suffering right now, and it’s not because of damned avocado toast. I wrote this whole blog post about how hard it is for literally everyone to survive these days.

I was able to handle this emergency that was less than two hundred dollars. I am so grateful for that, there were years and years that this wasn’t the case. 

There is just no reason why everyone shouldn’t be able to pay their bills, put food on their table, clothes on their backs and have an emergency fund in the bank. If you’re working forty hours a week, you should be able to live on that. If you don’t believe that, what the hell is the matter with you?

I’m not saying that we should all be able to afford the newest Fossel Smart Watch. (I really want that watch.) I’m saying that maybe if something very simple like a bra break happens, it shouldn’t be a financial nightmare.

I do mean everyone. People who work in what we consider lesser jobs like fast food and retail still deserve to earn a living wage. Those people have been working during the pandemic to make sure you can get your groceries, eat a hot meal you didn’t have to cook and get things you need in the mail safely. Like, it’s great that we’ve had the flags at half-mast for them. Now how about we make sure they can feed their kids?

Honestly, though, I’m probably preaching to the choir here. If you’re reading this, there’s a good chance you’re more on the side of the struggling than the comfortable. If that’s the case, you might feel powerless. Please listen to me when I say you are not. We are being reminded now as Americans that our politicians work for us. We pay their wages, and they’ve got no problem giving themselves raises. They should work for us. They should advocate for us to companies that pay insufficient wages. And we need to tell them that.

Write to your local representatives about raising the minimum wage to a living wage. Here’s a link to the resist app, it makes it easy to chat with the people who represent you.