I
can’t remember when or exactly why I started doing this, but I keep track of
how many words I write each day. Part of
it was probably that I wrote it on my calendar so I could feel bad if I hadn’t
written anything for three or four days.
After doing that for some time, I decided to take the advice I’d read
countless times in writing magazines (this was probably around 2002) and write
every day. At first it was a bit of a
struggle and I gave myself a lot of cheat days, but I eventually got into the
habit of writing practically every day.
(The day I posted this was the 792nd day in a row I had written, which I
believe is my current record.)
Now,
writing every day is fine, but it also helps if you have a daily goal. The goal I set for myself was 137 words a
day. (This will explain why.) For some prolific writers, that is a really
low goal. Besides personal reasons for
setting it at that, I also set it “low” so that I wouldn’t get discouraged if I
missed it. And a lot of things can get
in the way of writing: needing to veg after a long day of work, illness, or
having 8,000 other things to do.
For
a few years I did pretty good, but for the last couple of years my daily output
hasn’t been that great. I have written
almost every day for a decade or so, but some days it’s just adding a note like
“Character A has some centaur food that Character B has never heard of.” That’s
it. I’ve been following the letter of
“Write every day” but not the spirit.
Part
of the reason I wasn’t writing much was because I was being overworked. I got a part time job so I could make some
money but still have time to help my parents and write. But it soon turned into one of those 39 hours
a week “part time” jobs, which was good because I needed to pay for a new car,
but also sucked because it was so stressful I just wanted to veg when I got
home. Recently I’ve cut back to just two
or three days a week, and now I have time and I’m not as stressed, which is a
bit weird.
But
another part of the reason I wasn’t writing that much was YouTube. What happened was I found an interesting
channel dealing with history. They had
some 300 videos, and I started watching all of them. About fifty videos in, they did a
collaboration with someone else and I checked their channel out. They were interesting and had some 300 videos
of their own. I started watching all of
them, and about fifty videos in, they did a collaboration with someone else. It got to the point where I now have a bookmark
folder of fifty or so YouTube channels I need to check out. So in addition to all the channels I already
followed, I’m working through the backlogs of two or three other channels. While there are a few humorous channels I
follow, most concern history, science, literature, etc. I’m not memorizing everything I’m watching,
but I’m at least getting exposed to a great deal of stuff. Who knows what little tidbit stuck in my
brain will birth a story, or someday help me out of a jam?
Now to be honest, I
will admit that there are days where I’ll just sit and binge YouTube or Netflix
for like ten hours. Some days it was
because I was ill or injured, and really didn’t feel like doing anything. But a lot of it is the “I only have twenty more episodes of this
series to watch. The sooner I finish it,
the sooner I can get back to writing. Or
probably find another series to watch.” I felt terrible because I knew that if
I spent a fraction of that time writing, I’d actually get shit done. I’ve tried limiting the number of hours of
videos I watch each day, or setting a set amount and if I want to watch another
hour I have to write for an hour, and a dozen or so little tweaks to the
system. I haven’t found one that works
all the time yet. All I can say is that
I’m trying to write more. And that
includes blogs, so hopefully it will only be weeks between posts and not
months.
