OHHOW And The Joys Of Writing Streams

Last weekend, I took part in a writing event on Twitch after almost a year. OHHOW, or One Hundred Hours Of Writing, is a streaming event aiming to connect writers all over the world and encourage them to work on their projects – or anything, really – with the online community cheering them on. They track words, minutes, and turn what can be an isolating hobby or career into something fun and even competitive at times.

I’ve streamed with them before, but last year I was locked out of my account and could not. I recently got access back and so was very excited to stream for the event again.

Those two hours saw me working on projects I have been struggling with AND finishing a short story. It reminded me how I managed to finish my long projects over 2023 and 2024 – with people holding me accountable. Or rather, me holding myself accountable during productivity sprints. I can’t allow myself to doom scroll or get distracted if I’m sharing my screen to people, after all.

While I’m not sure if I’ll be doing two hour streams every week, I do want to try and get back to at least streaming once in a while. Maybe some of the projects I’ve been putting on the wayside will finally be completed. I’m so close to the end of at least one of them, and the OHHOW stream helped me break through my block on it.

It’s about community, I think, at the end. Having someone to bounce ideas off of, to cheer you on, to chat with when you need to turn your eyes away from the words. Discord servers are well and good, I’m in so many for writing and creating, but something about the immediacy of Twitch is different.

So thank you to OHHOW for reminding me that I enjoy streaming, I enjoy writing with community and friends, and that doing my work on stream WILL encourage me to write more than the few hundred I generally manage a day. Even if it is just once every couple of weeks, it’ll help more than hurt my endgame plans.

I’ll share my Twitch schedule on social media once I set one up!

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