Up in Ontario

Writing a book one day at a time

Courtesy of Tod's Inside the CBC blog I'm pointed in the direction of the Word Count Journal, a public place to write your book at an increasing per-word pace per day.

By simply writing a set number of words each day, every day, you will write a whopping 66,795 words at the end of one calendar year. Little by little, through the power of series, the total of your written words will add up to more words than contained in the average novel.

It is hard to believe but 1 + 2 + 3 + 4 ... + 364 + 365 = 66,795. Just like the Confucian saying that the longest trip begins with the first step, your journal journey begins with the first word.

Word Count Journal is nifty, but it's not the way I'd choose to write another book. Then again, I don't suppose I'm really their target. Tod, for instance, has chosen to just write how ever many words he wants.

I don't mean to poo-poo the idea of writing every day. If you're serious about writing a book, which actually means finishing writing a book, then you have to write often. Many times you have to write when you don't feel like writing, when the right words to lay out on the page feel elusive.

So while tools can be great helpers in endeavors - the word processing programs makes writing vastly easier than pen and paper because most writing is revising - tools remain tools: instruments that need a force applied to them. And if you want to write a book, you'll write a book. If you don't want it enough, then you won't. Which is an elitist way of saying that you have to work bloody hard for a long time with little external reward.

And that's just to write the first draft in the darwinian process. And that may also explain why it's hard to be a writer and a creationist, because as a writer you can see the survival of the fittest at your fingertips.