Thursday, February 11, 2010

Officially,

it has been over a week since I last wrote here. I apologize for that. I haven't been too busy, it hasn't slipped my mind. I just wanted a fresh approach. I'm not going to change anything, I just wanted to make it less of a chore. Now, I normally don't think as writing as a chore, I am finished with college. However, I don't think I need standards right now. I will do this, or not. Take it or leave it, as I was told. I will tell you this though, it does feel good to hear my fingers typing again. I like the fits of keystrokes and I hate the interruptions of errors, misspelled words, spaces between commas, missing the capitalization of an "I." It throws you off course. Now, the thing about writing, at least what I have experienced, and everyone is different, is you need to figure out your own schedule. Sure it is good to have deadlines, but those come with a price. One of my writing professors told me that you need to write a million words. After that, if you have talent, your writing will be the way you want it. Some of you might be thinking that is not so many. In this paragraph alone I have already written a hundred or so. It is a number that people know but don't understand. I have written over two dozen short stories, each around three thousand words. That is only around 73,000 words, not even a tenth of the million word mark. I have filled about a book and a quarter in another book, hand written, we'll say that's another forty thousand words. Now, for the most part I am not counting what I have written here. This is just rambling. You can't simply write a word and have it count. It has to mean something. You can't write potato salad 500,000 times and then expect your writing to take shape. Someday I think about this and I can't wait to spit out these million words. Nonetheless, we do not live in a fairy tale. Walls are not made of chocolate and the princess doesn't wake up. With all goals worth achieving, there has to be some sacrifice. For these million words to mean something, you have to understand that they don't mean anything. This is not me being bleak, maybe a little downtrodden but I will succumb to what is to be made of me. I will write those million words and then keep writing. After those million, that is when the battle begins. Before, that was just boot camp.

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