I know that I’ve banged on about this a lot lately, but I have only because its one of the things at the forefront of my mind, and its less annoying than the other thing that’s been there lately (the other thing being the “Everything is Awesome” song from The Lego Movie. Kill me soon.). Next week, if I don’t get hit by a bus (please, don’t direct any buses towards me!), I’ll cross the year mark of writing every day. Some days it’s been dead simple (I sat down with an idea for a short in my head, and proceeded to bang out all 3000 words in one shoulder-decimating sitting), and some days it’s so hard I wonder what the hell I’m trying to accomplish with all this mindless banging at the piece of plastic in front of me.
Another milestone that I will hit with the completion of this blog post (ahem, assuming I hit 500 words. Sorry, all you TL;DR types out there (Dan, I’m looking specifically at you.)) is 250k words. In a year. All typed by me (Dictation software doesn’t like my voice, with hilarious consequences at times. Here’s the previous sentence, spoken: “Another smile so that I will hit the completion of this blog post (him, singing at 500 words. Utility Arkansas (third item you.)) his 250k words.” I rest my case). I’m absolutely staggered. Admittedly, not all of the words were productive fiction, but a good many of them were. In the last year, I have written a novel and 21 short stories. One of the shorts is doing the rounds, and another is about to start in the next week. All told, my “productive” fiction totally almost 110k words. (PS: again for the TL;DR crowd. I’ll stick in some photos and videos and stuff. Happy? (Dan?) )
What I call productive is something that I have actually completed. For instance, I went down a long, winding road that turned into a blind alley the first time I started the novel I finished this year, and decided to chuck it (metaphorically, it’s still on my HD) and start again. Hard, since it meant getting rid of 3 months of work and almost 40k words, but the story that emerged from restarting is stronger than the original one could ever have been, even with extensive scaffolding to hold it up. I’ve also been blogging a bit, or writing essays (mostly to come to grips with what I see going on in the world. These are for my consumption for the most part).
A secondary, unintended consequence of writing every day is that it’s gotten one of my kids interested in the mechanics of story-telling, and he’s gone out and written his own book. I know! How cool is that? He’s in the middle of illustrating it, but he has yet to let me look at his drawings (I understand this completely). For the curious, he dictated it to me, as while he can spell and whatnot, he isn’t the fastest and, in his words, he wanted it to be done before school was over.
So there. 250k words, closing in on a year writing. Feeling good! And I lied about the photos and videos. Sorry Dan!