Marathon: Reflecting on Writing for the 1000th Day In A Row

Five or six weeks ago, a fellow blogger made mention of the fact that I post on this site every single day. In the same breath, he asked how long it had been, and all I knew at the time was that it had been “more than two years”. Not knowing for sure, I decided to investigate:

The first consecutive post is the now-archived Matineecast discussing our Top Five Films of 2009, dated December 28th of that year. After that, posts went up every day in 2010, every day in 2011, and every day so far this year.

And tomorrow that will tally 1000 days in a row.

…Damn.

I won’t sit here and tell you that such a streak was my intention all along, and if you set out to try to accomplish it yourself, I wish you a lot of luck. The fact that I was pretty lucky in the last three years or so is the only way this was able to happen.

I’m lucky because I have a daily routine that allows me to end or begin every day in front of my keyboard. I’m lucky because I have friends and family that actually fuel my passion, rather than belittle or tire of it. I’m lucky to live in a place that offers me inspiration for writing material. And of course, I’m lucky that fate has been kind to me and those I love.

Now if you were to skim through all thousand posts (but please don’t), you’d notice that they aren’t all pearls. You might recall that for a while, every Saturday the post was a placeholder photo saying “Today, I Feel Like This” (for example). Those posts might seem like a cheap way to keep a streak alive, but each one still took  a dose of thought, not to mention the time it took to pull the dvd from my shelf, do the screengrab, edit it, and so on.

There’s also the fact that every Friday, I put up a post that gathers links from my RSS Reader and highlights them for you fine folk (for example). That’s mostly a placeholder too right? Well again, you’d be surprised how long it takes to go through a week’s worth of material and try not to keep featuring the same names week after week.

So yes, to be clear, this little run I’ve been on hasn’t had me pound out one thousand words or more nightly. However, while I haven’t taken pen to paper, I’d wager that those shortcuts are likely offset by my treks to film fesitvals where I drop multiple posts a day (over the last three days of TIFF, I posted eleven separate posts). Even prior to that, there’s last summer when I was recording The Film Locker with Simon Columb. Between those episodes, the “Like This” phenomenon, and my weekly tally of what I’d been watching, Saturdays turned into a three-post affair for a while!

I guess what I’m saying is, that the run of 1000 days hasn’t come easily, or cheaply, and I’m pretty proud of that. That said, as I started writing this post, I discovered that I needed a bit of help.

See, this sort of post tends to lean a bit on the reflective side, but given the amount of reflection I did just three weeks ago when this site turned five years old, I didn’t want to repeat myself. So I turned to a good friend and asked if the thought of a nerd like me writing for 1000 days in a row sparked any questions. I got some good ones:

Why did you start doing it? It began as a quiet New Year’s Resolution, with the hopes of being a better writer at the end. I was reminded of meeting an author I admire who told me that the best advice he could give a would-be writer was to “Get into the habit”. I’m surprised I was able to make it through the first year, let alone have it stretch into a second and third.

Are you going to keep it going? As long as it stays fun, yes. If it ever loses its appeal, or starts to hamper the rest of my day-to-day, then I’ll change-up the routine. But right this moment, I enjoy the rhythm of a daily post. At this stage, I’m of the opinion that some sort of unforseen event will be what finally breaks the streak.

How far ahead do you plan? This varies from week to week as some stretches of time have seemingly filled themselves. Last December, for instance I only had to figure out three things to post about that weren’t regular features or reviews. In general though, seven days is par for the course.

What happens when you go on vacation? OK, here’s where the whole thing will seem crazy. To keep the streak alive, the weeks leading up to vacation are spent writing extra posts that are timed to post while I’m away (usually based around a watching series of some sort). Like I said: crazy. You’re also talking to a guy who uses a week’s vacation every year to attend a film festival.

Do you ever watch movies just you’ll have something to write about? Yes and no. When I watch films for The Blind Spot Series for instance, the selection is pretty deliberate. I might not feel like watching A STAR IS BORN that particular Saturday night, but will put it on top of the stack so I have enough time to mull it over and write for a specific day. However, I don’t watch something on impulse just for source material. I’ve gone on record in the past as saying that this can be a bad habit since it can put one in the wrong head space for a film. All told, I think I’ve kept a balance between “writing because I watch” and “watching so I can write”.

Do you ever get sick of posting or movies? Movies, no. At this stage, they’re my passion – and the people I have met because of that shared passion have made it that much more worthwhile. Posting is coming easier and easier as time passes. The only time I come close to getting sick of it are nights where writer’s block creeps in and I struggle for a topic to write about. Racking my brain just for the fun of it isn’t exactly what I want to do right before bedtime.

Has posting every day changed how you watch movies? Films that I’m watching for the first time, absolutely. I come at them with a much more critical eye now. Films that I’ve seen before, no. Those are usually the ones I can put on when I want to shut my brain off. Writing about films in general will do that though.

With all of that said, I think the routine has made me a better writer; I know it has broadened my horizons in terms of the types of films I reach for…mostly because there’s only so many things you can say about the movies that are in your wheelhouse.

So how to mark this momentous occasion? Well, much like the Fifth Anniversary Post, I wanted to write about a film. This time around though, I wanted to choose a film in honour of the person who most enables and encourages this rhythm I’ve set. When I first met her, she mentioned how much she loved a specific film, and it was what piqued my curiosity in her since it was such a unique film to love so dearly. It’s also a film representative of  the sort of cinema I’ve fallen deeper in love with over the past thousand days.

If you’ve read this far, thanks for encouraging me to keep coming back for 1000 days in a row…and come back tomorrow to mark the occasion with a film that’s become very special to me.