Dream Big Set Goals Take Action

100 Days Wrap Up

I can’t believe today’s the last post in my #100 Days series. It’s been such a wonderful (and exhausting) experience giving you a glimpse into my life the last 100 days. I hope you’ve enjoyed it, too. I’ve loved hearing from you – your comments on the various blogs and on social media – and I hope you’ll continue to stay in touch. I’ll be going back to posting a few or more times per month on the blog, and I hope you’ll stay tuned.

Here are some things I learned from blogging for 100 days:

There’s always time. You can make time for anything if you make a commitment to do it. I was nervous before starting because I worried I wouldn’t be able to post everyday, but that wasn’t the case.

Habits take commitment. If you make a commitment to changing a habit – a real, true commitment – then you will stick to it. Writing a blog post each day became a habit and it was easier to do this as time went on. If you’ve followed the series, you know that changing bad habits and developing good habits is on my resolution list this year. While I’ve been successful with some, I haven’t been with others. I’m going to take some of the lessons I learned here and apply them to other habits.

Little things add up. If you do commit to a habit of doing something – no matter how little it is – every day, the results will add up. In today’s society, we’re so used to immediate gratification, it can be hard for us to invest in things long-term. But I ended up writing OVER 42,000 words over the course of this hundred days (that’s close to the length of a first draft of my books). My shortest post was only 16 words, and my longest was over 1700 words. There’s a BIG difference between those two, but the point is that it doesn’t matter how much you do (or, in my case, write) each day. The point is that you do SOMETHING each day. Even over this past weekend, one day I was only able to write 5 words. 5. That’s it. But another day I wrote over 2000, and I ended up writing over 3000 for the weekend and over 6000 for the week. Do something, no matter how little or big, each day, and you’ll see the results add up.

You won’t run out of ideas. Another thing I was nervous about was running out of blogpost ideas. While some days were more of a struggle, those were days when my health was on the rougher side, and my brain wasn’t on top of its game. I was able to overcome this by pre-planning, jotting down or even pre-drafting some posts and ideas on my good days, so I had some stored up. It wasn’t that I ran out of ideas, it was more that I wasn’t always able to express them as well when my health was on a downswing.

Unexpected creativity. As an author, I love creating new worlds and scenes and stories for my characters to live in, but I love being creative in other parts of my life, too. I mentioned before that I like graphic design. Well, something I hadn’t expected was getting practice in graphic design every day, as I created an image for almost all of my #100Days posts. I really enjoyed doing it, and I learned some fun tips and tricks that I’ll apply to other design projects later.

Try it! I don’t know if I’ll do a blog series like a did this year, but I’m going to think about doing something creative for next year. It was especially challenging for me this year, as I was working on multiple books at the same time, so I’m going to see how I’m feeling next year before I decide. I do encourage everyone to think about trying the #100Days project next year. Even if you don’t blog or post on social media about it, or even if you do it at a different time of year, try doing something creative or fun for 100 days. You won’t regret it – I know I didn’t!

Cheer yourself on! You need to be your own cheerleader. Believe that you can accomplish your goals, cheer yourself on, and you’ll find that your task might not be as difficult as you thought it was going to be. Here’s some final motivation for you.

Dream Big Set Goals Take Action

Here are some highlights from the series:

Here’s where it started, and why I decided to participate in the series this year.

A look at my daily grind with a day job.

Why I decided to write romance.

My writing process covered several posts: I’m a panster, characters, heat level in romance, general inspiration and royal inspiration, research, the editing process, ebook creation, book cover creation, and what I do after I finish writing,

I wrote personal posts, including progress not perfection, struggle, how my health has affected my writing, it’s okay not to be okay, little things make big days, mistakes are okay, it’s okay to relax, habits and motivation, hate vs, love, You Are Not Alone, progress vs. procrastination, I’m an author, balance, and staying positive.

I had a few 5-part series of posts, including one series on my muse (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), another series on overcoming fear (1, 2, 3, 4, 5), and a last series on planning (1, 2, 3, 4, 5).

I wrote several posts about my weekend goals and plans, starting with the truth about weekends,

I had several motivational and inspiration posts (like believe in youdon’t look back, dream big, and stay beautiful), and posts on real-life royal events (a new baby and a wedding),

I released THREE books during these hundred days! Permanently Princess (Royals of Valleria #10), Rush (Hector & Millie) (Seaside Valleria #1), and Ripple (Persy & Sully) (Seaside Valleria #2) which was actually my fourth release overall for the year (I published Sarah & Vittorio (Royals of Valleria #9) back in February before this series began). I also published posts thanking you – my wonderful readers – for making the release days so lovely, gave away exclusive tidbits leading up to the releases, and posted about my remaining 2018 and tentative 2019/2020 writing/publishing plans.

Whew! What a great 100 days! What posts have you liked the most from this series? Comment on this post and let me know (if you’re receiving the blog by email, just click “Read More” to navigate to the blog page to comment).

~xoxo Marianne

This is Post 100 of 100 as part of the #100DaysofMKAuthorLife.

Leave a Comment

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.