March/April Wrap-Up: Writing As A Workout · 12:59am May 4th, 2022
Christie Yant is an excellent writer and a cool human being. She made an excellent spreadsheet for tracking word counts and writing achievements, which you can download here. I've taken to using it as a tool to gaslight myself into writing more. So far it's been working! But how does attempting to accomplish long-term daily writing and changing my writing goal structure affect my performance?
We gon talk about it
Twilight Sparkle finds my word count, 2022 (colorized)
A few years ago I was going through a serious weight-loss journey. I came across this book called, "Can't Hurt Me," by a navy seal named David Goggins. Being someone who spent a large part of his life dealing with (and lately overcoming!) significant feelings of self-doubt and inadequacy, I gravitated towards Goggins' style and the relentless dedication to hard work he lays out in the book. His advice helped me lose nearly 80 pounds between 2019 and 2021, and when I lost my job and went through a period of significant career retraining in the later part of that year, it helped me stay focused and come out the other side of the pandemic with a new career and an in-tact sense of artistic purpose.
As far as life advice goes, I wouldn't recommend it. Let's be realistic: if you know who David Goggins is, you'll understand why his advice isn't applicable to most people. He'd be the first person to tell you that. This book worked for me. Don't take this as an endorsement. I'm not your dad.
But I also don't want to diminish how much I got out of this book, and his social media content. Check this out:
When the ending is unknown, and the distance is unknown, that's when you know who the fuck you are.
dang bro, wisdom as wide as his thighs
Advice from writers is far less compelling to me, but it's worth nothing there are many successful authors who share a craftsman style approach.
Steven King is another writing idol of mine. I remember getting yelled at by a grade-school volleyball coach for reading a friend's copy of King's book, "Cell," while sitting on the bench during a game. I'd just gotten twelve straight serves in a row before being subbed out, mister Coachman, so maybe chill and let me read my book, jeez. It's my process.
In King's memoir, "On Writing," he says it's best to write a minimum of 2000 words a day, but that for most writers, 1000 words a day is a more realistic goal. He elaborates:
“Read and write four to six hours a day. If you cannot find the time for that, you can't expect to become a good writer.”
Ann Rice, one of the most successful American writers of this century so far, aims for 3000 but doesn't stop there.
“I have to get all distractions out of the way…I can’t just clock in at 3,000 words. I have to have time free to resolve things. I write in episodic ways. But when I’m ready to plunge in, I write from late morning through all afternoon, all evening.”
Mark Twain, perhaps one of the most famous American writers of all time, clocked somewhere between 1,400 and 18,00 a day.
“In 1897, when we were living in Tedworth Square, London, and I was writing the book called “Following the Equator” my average was eighteen hundred words a day; here in Florence, my average seems to be fourteen hundred words per sitting of four or five hours.”
Plenty of writers define their output by qualitative measures and don't worry about wordcounts, AND THIS IS PERFECTLY OKAY. Writing is beautiful, and if you want to pen a few hundred words here and there and leave it at that, I'm proud of you and I hope you're proud of you too.
I've found that, for me, it's not as simple. Pulling quality out of myself is a battle sometimes. I'm naturally a lazy person, and the only way to fight this is to create arbitrary, sometimes pointless goals. But when I know that I haven't written a thousand words today, when I remove the possibility of dodging that obligation, I sit down and I write. Every time, without exception. When the ending is unknown, and the distance is unknown, you need something to keep you going.
Back to Christie Yant's excellent writing calendar! With the magic of Google Sheets (which is free by the way! All you need to do is sign up for a Drive account. It's so good. Friends don't let friends write in MS Word), you can download a blank copy of the spreadsheet and deface it to your heart's content.
I find this tracker an incredibly useful continuity tool. My experience of writing is a freewheeling haze. I feel spontaneous, sometimes a little scared, sometimes very joyful, but always on the edge of my seat. Writing's fun for me, as I hope it's fun for you! But most of the time I forget most of what I write the instant it's on the page. I write and then I move on. I rarely agonize over small things (sometimes to my detriment, lol). In using this tracker, I've gained a way to instantly remember what kind of day yesterday was. "Oh, I got 1200 words in yesterday, nice! I can keep that going." "Oh shit, yesterday I only got 450 words, let's see if I can turn this around." "Yooo 2000 words yesterday, fuck yeah, let's do it again babyyy."
I've found tracking my writing has changed my style somewhere, too. I find myself being able to tap into longer, more intentional prose. Letting go and letting myself become a meat interface for the ideas in my head to be entered into my computer, while never difficult, has become even more effortless. The downside to this is, I've found myself elaborating on things that shouldn't be elaborated on. I drag sentences on too long sometimes. And when this approach as a whole backfires, I write 1000 words of garbage I didn't want to write because, well, I gotta write a thousand words today, better write something. That's what editing's for, anyway.
As far as writing advice goes, I wouldn't recommend it. Let's be realistic: I write fanfiction and mostly self-published gen fiction. My advice isn't applicable to most people, because everyone's writing journey takes a different path. This works for me. Don't take this as an endorsement. I'm not your dad.
So what does all that theory break down to? Here's my word count from the time I discovered the tracker in March to the end of April:
Final results: ROOM FOR IMPROVEMENT. There's a lot of days I got lazy and didn't write at all, and there's a lot of days where I fucked off at the 800ish word mark and gave in to the urge to go clubbing in Manhattan. Did I mention I live in NYC? I live in NYC. It's great. Move here. It's great. 100 percent of Saturday and Sunday failures to meet my 1k goal are because I'm hungover. I won't apologize for my degeneracy. Did you forget what website we're on?
Writing is a long-term medium. The work unfolds over a period of months and years, and more often than not there is no marker to let you know when the work is complete. When it takes so long for final products to materialize, I've found it useful to track my wordcounts to keep myself on track and motivated to finish. When the ending is unknown, and the distance is unknown, having a way to track where you've been can help you chart where you're going.
Total wordcount of this blog: 1390. Better believe I'm adding that to my daily total.
Thanks, Dad.