A Million Words

I’m sorry if this is old news to you, but I’ve only just found this concept whilst poking around on the internet. It seems that you need to write a million words before you are any good at it.

At 999,999 you are writing unpublishable gibberish then at 1,000,001 publishers will form an orderly queue and start waving cheques at you.

Unfortunately this doesn’t seem to be reflected in reality.

It’s similar to the 10,000 hour rule, where you are judged to need 10,000 hours of practice to become good at something. In terms of napping and procrastination, I have put the groundwork in and can claim to be proficient at them. Of course, whether I’m good at napping because I’ve practised, or have merely accumulated the hours because I was born good at napping, is a moot point.

As I recall the concept from the times when I was coaching the kids. it has to be focussed practice, so just dropping off in front of the TV may not count.

Similarly, despite my 10,000 hours of procrastination, there is a lingering doubt in my mind. If I was really good at procrastination, wouldn’t I still be meaning to get round to it?

And if I were any good at writing I wouldn’t just have spent ten minutes reminding myself about the subjunctive mood. It’s something that I’ve managed to do without over the last twenty or thirty years, but am having to relearn after an editor picked me up on it last year.

I’ve done about 1961 posts, and those posts have been about 350 words long. That’s near enough 686,000 words. It has, to be honest, seemed like more. That leaves me with 314,000 words to go, and I am sure I must have written them in the last sixty years, so that means I should be ready to start some serious writing.

Again, at the back of my mind is the idea that I really should have had more focus in my blog writing. I have gained fluency and a certain amount of discipline, which will come in handy, though I’m not sure it’s done me a lot of good in terms of quality writing. I have really let things get a bit slapdash over the years and need to get a grip.

Talking of getting a grip, I just wrote a post pretending to be a knitted bear – I think that lockdown is getting to me.