I love to write, but I think you may have guessed that by now!
And I am so thankful that I am able to do something I love.That out of all my soul searching, I found the one thing I was destined to do regardless whether I am successful or people like what I write. It doesn’t matter as much as the fact that this is who I am meant to be; that when I write I can express myself far more eloquently than when I talk.
When I am writing, it is who I am, it is my voice, it makes me complete.
As I have said prior, I didn’t discover this fact till a few years back, though the number of books that I consumed should have been an indicator; I just never connected the dots.
Somehow, I had missed in the course of my early years some of the crucial components of writing, the arsenal you need for your words to make sense: grammar, punctuation – honestly, I still have no clue how to utilise these valuable tools, even spelling eludes me – thankfully word processing programs can hide most of my mistakes.
But when I write, I let a story take over my mind, working at a subconscious level and the writing flows out of my head onto a screen and I can write.
I can write a thousand words easily, I don’t need to watch the word count: when I am writing a scene, the words come because they are my own.
When I was doing a degree in history I had to write a lot of two thousand word essays and writing other people’s words into my own, implementing their own ideas and thoughts into a structured and convincing argument was not so easy.
It would take me a week or two to write that many words and it certainly wasn’t a pleasure, it was most definitely a pain.
I think that ‘who’ the words belong to is the difference.
Writing my own words, thoughts, feelings and even writing style is self-expression on a page.
I can write what the hell I like, there is no censorship, I can delve right into the psyche on my human mind and pick up the fragments of memories, stories, emotions and wrap them around my typing fingers, as I assemble them into a story, scene, emotion of my own creation.
Writing those words feels powerful, doing it synergistic.
An average book is 80,000 words long so how many writing hours and days does it take to write a book?
From my personal experience it takes me 1 hour to write 1,000 words so it would take me 80 hours to write a book that size.
If I can give myself 2 hours a day to focus solely on writing then that is 2,000 words per day I could potentially write when the conditions are right (kids at school, no prior engagements etc)
Realistically, I can write 5 days week.
So, I can write 10,000 words a week!
A dissertation sized document of my words every week – WOW!
Prior to writing a book I had only ever written 10,000 words once and that took months.
In theory, I can write an 80,000 word book in 8 weeks – 2months!
But that writing, those 80,000 words are not a finished book.
Those words that were in my head, let loose on the page at break neck speed, need a lot of sorting out.
It is only the first draft of that beautiful story: there are a lot of mistakes, a lot of rewriting of scenes and hours of editing.
It’s not as simple as it seems.
Stephen King advocates in his memoirs, On Writing – writing 1,000 words, six days a week and many authors advocate the same or have a similar process.
However, like most things, you cannot force this upon yourself or set unrealistic goals.
Like dieting or exercise if you do this, it is likely you will fail when life gets in the way and you can’t achieve your goals.
It needs to be something that works for you, it is consistent and you can see that you are improving.
Nico Ryan makes the point: “Merely going through the motions of writing 500 words (or whatever the newest target number is) every single day will not make you a stronger writer.
It’s what you do with those 500 words that matter far, far more.” What you learn, who you show, how you develop your category and most importantly how you grow as a writer.
Like everything in life: what works for one person, may not necessarily work for another.
You need to find your own style and your own pace.
Set realistic targets and far more importantly enjoy the process and what you produce: not just a word count and a festering hatred for something you once enjoyed.