UPDATE: November 2020 Read what I have learned about writing daily for one year in my challenge: One Year Writing: 30 Lessons Learned in 30 Days
I did it.
I am concluding, with these words, my challenge, writing at least 500 words per day, every day, for one year. On everything and anything, thoughts, notes, or reflections. But also ideas, article drafts, transcriptions, remarks, elaborations. I feel weird. I am perplexed. I have such an enormous amount of downloaded thoughts in this half a million words that I am overwhelmed. I’ve learned and understood a lot of things about myself and on myself. Most of my writing has been self-therapy, exploration, boredom, demotivation, inspiration, and, sometimes, also desperation.
Half a million words could fill a 2,000 pages book. Four books of 500 pages each. Eight books of 250 pages each. “Book” is a big word. Of this infinite sea of thoughts, all of it has been useful for my growth but, little, very little is worth the effort to share it. And this is another vital reflection. If I hadn’t poured 500’000 words for 264 hours of work, I doubt, seriously, I could have achieved another challenge that I have failed for decades: publishing on my blog, more or less regularly.
My WordPress statistics say that I have published (not only written!) 30 articles and 32 pages for a total of almost 60,000 words. And this in less than a year.
For every ten written pages, to stretch the analysis, I’ve published one. There’s another excellent learning. To get something done, I need to try ten times. Not necessarily to reach any excellence or win any indeterminate recognition, to pass from my private to the public, I had to extract five hundred thousand words painfully. I have a different perspective on future projects. There is no planning, theorizing, talking, or dreaming, which is worth it if you don’t put the hard work in it. Work to be done, first of all, on yourself. Critically and humbly.
And now, what? What shall I do of this? Why am I not feeling like celebrating? All of this work led me to understand that, maybe, at last, I can finally start. This is not arriving. This is not a finish line.
I am on the line, yes, but on the starting side.
The race hasn’t started, yet.
Do you want to know how I wrote half a million words in a year?
UPDATE: November 2020 Read what I have learned about writing daily for one year in my challenge: One Year Writing: 30 Lessons Learned in 30 Days
Leave a Reply