I came across atomic essays via some folks posting their efforts on Twitter and decided to give it a try for myself. Maybe this could help form a bridge between this seldomly updated blog and all the scraps of ideas I always seem to have lying around, littering my subconcscious.
I didn’t fancy doing it alone so I set up a little cohort at work of fellow frustrated would-be-writers so we could share and encourage one another. Even just setting this up was quite satisfying as I love building little systems for small side projects, creating templates, shared resources and protocols.
“The days that I did write, I felt very good indeed, felt like some rusty brain cells were being given new life.”
The goal is to “ship 30 for 30” - write one, original 250-word essay a day for 30 days, screenshot it and publish via social media. Rather than posting essays on twitter however, we used an internal chat group. And so on 1st February, we started our collaborative writing experiment.
Things went well for the first week with everyone able to write one a day for the first 5 days or so. The range of topics was very broad and a delight to read each day. From how-to guides, to personal reflections, deep dive into specific topics and chapters of imagined books. Once the weekend arrived, people started to struggle with time, motivation and ideas.
“I learnt to cut down on the frills and focus on the message, thanks to the 250 word limit. Also how you can transform and create any idea into a small readable write up/note.”
Personally, I managed to write 24 essays out of 28 days in the month (a little short of the 30 but that’s just an aspirational average, right?) This has been the most productive spell of writing I have ever had. I’ve posted all the essays on my blog now and pretty much doubled the number of posts in the time it would take me to even just think about writing something in the past. An amazing burst of productivity inspired by a great system.
“ I may have only done a week but seen amazing conversations happening here! ”
I’ve listed all my posts below to collect them in one place. I’m already planning for second cohort in May and can’t wait to get back into the groove.