bgfay

I do an odd amount of writing, I guess. It is six in the morning on a weekday and I've written three pages by hand. I got an idea while using the bathroom after those three pages and am typing a couple hundred words now. I'll write an email note to my wife to read when she comes downstairs before work. At school, I'll write five to six pages in my notebook, edit a piece I wrote yesterday, and write more of this. After school, I'll have coffee with Mom, dinner with my family, and likely write some more. In bed I may do a page in my notebook just to unload my mind. I could count words today, but I'll just estimate three thousand to five thousand. That's a good day.

Some of that writing I post to the blog, but most of it disappears onto paper or into the computer. A waste? Maybe, but my way of writing is to put up a lot of words and pick out a few good ones. Most of my writing that goes out into the world begins over a thousand words but ends close to seven hundred. I begin in verbosity then work to be concise, so it makes sense to write thousands of words daily with intentions to publish only a few.

Still, I wonder if I'm wasting words (and time). I haven't made time to work on bigger projects. All this daily writing is fine, but the long piece, a sustained bit of work that tells a larger story, I'm curious about doing that work. I have ideas and have begun some, but I have yet to develop the practice I need for them. I think I'm ready.

My writing life is my own and I don't want to convince anyone this is the way to do it. I'm no shining success at this, so it's not my place to evangelize. I'm just sharing my methods because I find writers' habits interesting and I'm a teacher who can't stop teaching.

I might do 5,000 words today. I hope that some of them are really good. That would be cool.