The single most important bit of information in this post is that I have launched the mutable, my weekly publication of prose and poetry. Right now, it's somewhat underwhelming both in presentation and in volume of content. For an explanation of the former, see this page.
As for the latter, the low output thus far is the result of pragmatism. I have made quite a few attempts to jump back on the writing-every-day horse since I first fell off it about 6 years ago. A lot of my failures were the results of simple distraction, but excessive ambition has been a factor in those, as well as the sole culprit at times. When making these comeback attempts, I have often recalled my most productive years as a writer. As a boy ages 14 to 16, especially, writing dominated my free time. The moment I was home from school, I'd hole myself up in my room, possibly read for an hour, possibly play video games for an hour, but I'd always write a minimum of five hours each day, quite often pushing to seven or eight. On weekends, spending 10 to 12 hours writing straight through was not uncommon for me. This all contributed to an average output hovering between 9,000 and 10,000 words per day.
Now, of course, my lack of time spent editing and my significantly less rigorous quality-control had some hand in that outlandishly high figure, but most of all, that volume represents the fact that by that time, I had been writing for long stretches every day for 7+ years. To not account for that habituation and expect I could just jump in at some mark near that, when I have less time and energy to devote to writing anyway, is of course going to lead to some burn out.
I also learned, as I got older, that 3,000 words per day is considered quite productive--a novel a month, if you think about it. Weighing that fact alongside what I want to achieve as a writer, I've come to two conclusions. The first is that I'm going to set 4,000 words as my long term goal while still building up my readership, and then I will throttle back to 3,000 when I'm more established and can afford to divert energy to my other literary ambitions--plays, screenplays, television scripts. The second is that I need to build up to that goal gradually.
To that end, I promised myself that I would write as much as I could without straining myself in my spare time leading up to the first edition of the mutable. What I ended up with was an average output of 300 words per day, five days that week. It was a bit humiliating, but that was how far I'd fallen. I accepted that as a starting point, and published anyway. This past week, I was able to turn out ~500 words per day for five days without much trouble. A good increase, but still a ways off my mark, and also a bit abrupt. Starting Tuesday, I'll be aiming to write up through Sunday and push my target word-count up by 50 each day (550 on Tuesday, 600 on Wednesday . . . 800 on Sunday.) 50 is a small enough number that each increment up doesn't greatly increase the challenge, but will add up over an acceptable span of time to my target. I may, if certain milestones seem to give me difficulty, stabilize the word-count for a while, but if things go smoothly, then I should have my first 4,000 word day near the end of the year or the beginning of next one.
As for how I'm going to handle this blog from now on, I'm not quite sure. The lack of structure in my days lately, combined with more difficulty sleeping than usual has meant a lot of time and energy spent inefficiently, leaving me rather exhausted at the end of the day, resenting the idea of having to describe it all coherently. I'm mulling over the possibility of making the blog a morning task, in which I describe the events of the previous day.
I do have some things of substance to discuss in the next post, so I'll probably save schedule restructuring talk for that.
Cheers,
~L
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