300 Words

That's all it would take for a person to write a novel every year.  One page, or 300 words, every day, and you would be writing a pretty good length manuscript every year.  That's awesome.

Now, there is a lot more to it than that, there is grammar and punctuation and storyline... and reading. 

"If you don't have the time to read, you don't have the time (or the tools) to write.  Simple as that." -Stephen King

However, the point of this post is to talk about the act of writing.  The words have to hit the page if you want to write a story.  Short story, novel, epic, poem, screenplay, it doesn't matter what it is, if you don't sit down and write it, it won't get done.  There are some writers that swear by their word count, and others that don't have one at all.  In my case, I need the daily word count.  (I don't always stick to it, I'm slacker.  There are far too many days that I don't write at all, but I feel like crap on those days because I don't feel like I've accomplished anything.)

When I'm being good, my word count is 2500 words a day.  That's a lot.  On writing days, though, I hit that number and life is good.  Some of it is trudging, and sometimes my brain is numb because I know that I'm writing things that will just be deleted later, but the story moves forward.  Forward motion, hopefully every day, is paramount to finishing what you start.

300 words is a very low number.  Fourth graders are hitting 300 words for their essays and book reports, the night before it's due.  However, if I wrote every day, and my word count was only 300 words, I would still be writing a novel a year.  Now take that back to when I started this blog, when I finally decided that I was going to do it, (my first post was in May of 2008) and I would have at least four novel-length manuscripts. 

Would they all be worth reading?  Maybe not, but even without writing every day, I have written thousands of pages that will never see the light of day.  Every writer has.  (Okay, probably not every writer)  The sad truth, though, is that I have those four novels in my head already.  They are good stories, that I think people will enjoy them, because I think I would love to read them.  I just haven't written them because, as I said earlier, I'm a slacker.

What's the point?

Write every day.  You should, I should, anyone that hopes to get their story out there should write every day.  Even if it's only one page.

Alright, that's it.  Thanks for reading.
buh bye then