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
5 responses to “Writing Half a Million words in One Year”
[…] I wrote daily for one year for a total of half a million words. Why? What did I write about? What have I learned in the process? I thought I should make a reflection on this important challenge. I’ve learned something. Mostly about myself. And I’ve also committed to leverage on the compound effect of writing daily. But if I don’t extract the essence of this herculean effort, this thing which made me suffering and proud, which made me stronger and more aware, then why would I have done it? […]
[…] Writing every day for 365 days, I’ve learned that I feel like it doesn’t mean much to me as soon as I achieve a goal. […]
[…] Writing every day for 365 days, I’ve learned that writing is thinking. […]
Hi 🙂
I can relate to your experience here.
I am writing a novel but I should calcute how many words I need to write before I obtain a full finished chapter. Without precise stats however I just can evaluate through the word count of the pages I wrote before starting my chater : I have a fill documentation of my novel, chapter walkthrough and scenes outlining… I think I will use some stats calculator tools just to obtain some numbers to evalute that but for each 4000 word I write per day, I needed two years of preparation and 4000words more before begining.
Trying ten times before giving birth to a finished article seems a good ratio from my perspective. I came from artschool where trying without obtaining a final product is the norm. For one canvas or prototype, you can try an retry over and over. Make a lot and a lot of preparatory sketches.
I really think that writing is not so different than making skectches. I hope you harvest the fruits of your year of writing every day 🙂
[…] I have a lengthy collection of incomplete diaries. Up until 2019. The magic year. On the 24th of September 2019, I started with a commitment to write every single day, for one year, at least 500 words or for at least 30 minutes, and I’ve ended up writing half a million words. […]