I read once about a guy who wrote his first novel 250 words at a time.
Every day, he sat down and wrote 250 words. At the end of a year, he had a novel.
“Gee,” I thought to myself. “That sounds doable.”
So I did: in 15 months, I wrote about 125,000 words. At the end I had a very poor draft of my first novel. It hasn’t progressed much in the two or so years since, but it still serves as a reminder of what I can get done with a little bit of effort each day.
I spent this past weekend at WordCamp US, and one of my favorite talks was by Chris Lema on finding your voice through blogging. Mostly I thought he was fantastic because he was saying a bunch of shit I already believed. But I also liked his talk because it reminded me to get back into blogging.
I’ve heard people talk in the past about doing a daily blog. And every time I’ve heard them describe it, I’ve thought “Nope. No way. Not every day. I can’t do that.”
But then the other day I remembered the 250 words, and how I made it my mission to keep going, day in and day out, for fifteen months, with only a handful of missed days in between.
I wrote in airports. By hand on the back of any paper I could find. On days when I literally fell asleep at the keyboard and woke to find the remnants of transcribed dreams.
I wrote every freaking day, and even though most of them were shitty words, they taught me more about writing than all the not-writing I’d done for years prior.
So it’s not a novel this time. It’s my blog. And daily seems like a lot, and I’m worried this is just a lot of bravado talking. But 250 words? That’s doable.
Day 1.
