1,000 days of writing

It was probably almost twenty years ago that I read a “Writing Advice from a real Author” article in a writing magazine that said that to get anywhere with writing you need to treat it like a job and do it every day.  Part of it is that the only way to get better at writing is to write, but the main thing is that the “job” of writing is to put words on a page and one way to rack up the word count is to do every day. 

I thought that was brilliant advice and tried to implement it.  It just took time.  First I wrote every day for a week, then I was busy and missed a day.  Then I wrote every day for a month, then I was sick and didn’t feel like doing anything.  I eventually wrote every day for a year, but then my computer died.  I forget what exactly my old record was, but I think I was in the 930s when I got home late from work one night, and I just forgot to hammer something out before watching YouTube videos.  It wasn’t until about 1:00 AM that I realized, I didn’t write anything yesterday.  Fuck.

I think I took a short break after that, but then I started again.  And early this morning I spent a few minutes to make some notes on a scene.  Which means that today I have written for – you’ll never guess – 1,000 days!  Now I admit too few of those days were me really hammering out the pages of a story.  Many of those days were me just taking a minute to make a quick note, but that still counts.

Anyway, on to 2,000!