You never know how much you write until you add it up
To be honest, I’m not an obsessive counter. Not of words, or of how much I’ve written. OK, I’ve mentioned when I’ve broken some barriers, but strangely enough friends informed me of those numbers.
It’s not that I don’t pay attention to how much I’m writing on certain article assignments, but I can’t tell you off the top of my head how many words I’ve written since I started in this weird and wonderful business all those years ago. I bandy about the figure 1,000,000 words — articles, corporate, and technical writing. On top of that, all of the words that I’ve written in practice, in blog posts, or in things that were just never published. Could be more, might be less. But I like the thought of six zeros …
The other day, I was finishing off a rather productive week when the urge to count how much I’d written that week struck me. Where that urge came from, I don’t know. But I decided to give into it. And what I learned shocked me. In a good way. Aside from the corporate writing that I do during the day, I found that I write anywhere from 7,000 to 10,000 words in my spare time. That include the articles that I write each week and anywhere from five to eight posts for the various blogs that I maintain.
Those numbers got me thinking. To be honest, I always feel that I’m not writing enough, and that I could do more if it wasn’t for … well, various factors. Including my own innate laziness. But maybe that impression is dead wrong. Obviously I do get a lot done. Sure, I could probably do more. But what I do is nothing to be sneezed at.
So, if like me you feel that you don’t do enough writing tally up how much you put down on paper or on screen each week. The numbers might surprise you. And if you do that experiment, why not share it with the fives of people who read this blog by leaving a comment.
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