a million words of crap

[dragonlady7]

Someone linked to a blog post by Neil Gaiman wherein he mentions that Raymond Chandler is reputed to have told wannabe writers that they've a million words of crap to get out of their systems before, presumably, they can write well.

And I thought about it.

And I realized, a million words isn't that much.


I think I've written a million words this year.

*goes to check*

Yup.

Since January 2004, counting all Word, TextEdit, and BBEdit documents in my "writing" folder created after that date (actually I'm only counting the ones in three project folders, projects I started this year; there might be others but there's no way for me to separate out what was done in '04 instead of earlier), I have written approximately:

1,008,111 words.


Of those, 376.490 were Lord Of The Rings fanfiction. Of which about 10,000 words has been published on HASA or elsewhere.

So, Neil, I've paid my dues, I guess. Does that mean I'm good yet?


I know this kind of statement is meant as encouragement to those who hold off on their dreams of becoming a writer thinking that they need a great idea first. Yes. You need to just write, to get it out there, and all that.

But man... I been doin' that. Am I any good yet?

Have to finish something first.

I wish I were happier with this novel. I wish I could get it together and find someone who would read the first draft and just tell me if it had any redeeming merits.

UGH! Nose to the grindstone. First thing's first, I gotta finish the mo'fucker. I wish I felt less like crap. GUH! (should I spell that !HGU to be symmetrical?)

Comments

[silverwerecat.livejournal.com]

Good God, my fingers hurt just by reading this. I have hardly written as much. I don't think I've written any more over 200,000 words this year.

We cats are creatures of few words.

[dragonlady7.livejournal.com]

It's been kind of an intense year for me.
But I generally write a lot.

*despair* I just wish some of it was done!!

The novel I started in January is so many wasted words that I've cut now; of the 475,000 words in there, I'm only using about 50k tops.
The fanfiction, it's so disorganized; I have seven different versions of Eomer and Lothiriel's courtship, I have five drafts of Eomund and Theodwyn's courtship, I have four versions of Eomer's reaction to his father's death, I even have two versions of Eomund's reaction to his father's death; I have fifty thousand words of just plain mess of Eomer and Lothiriel's married life; I have what's got to amount to 40k of buddy-fic between Eomer and Faramir, I have... I don't even know anymore.

They say you have to be unafraid of waste when you're being creative but I have lived by that philosophy to its utmost and I have so little to show for it. It's really depressing. I wish I were more the taciturn sort and only said what I meant... But I don't, I say everything.

And there's a million words.

At least the last 100k are in order.

this is from kat

[(Anonymous)]

Well, I think you're good. Way better than me, and man, I write for a living. Granted, what I do is widely acknowledged to be the lowest form of writing, but anyway, you've definitely exceeded that. :)