Prose Night at the Writing Life, 10 August 2024

On the subject of my experiences with data and writing.

Photo by Luke Chesser on Unsplash

For a good portion of my writing life, I was flailing around without having much of a clue as to how well or how efficiently I was writing. In my head, it’s probably one of the reasons why I spent several years not writing anything and wondering why I didn’t feel like I was much of a writer even though I spent well over a decade writing as a journalist and taught writing, on and off, for nearly as much time¹. Eventually, as all of the self-help books and advice would lay out, I began to think setting some manner of goals would help me be productive as a writer.

My intent in sharing my experience with writing and data is not to give you, the reader, a foolproof system of being a prolific writer. If any writing teacher or coach should tell you, a lifetime is not enough time to learn everything there is to know about writing. Goodness knows there is plenty I don’t know, especially about promotion and reaching an audience. However, there are some things that have worked for me, so I decided to share them for this edition of Prose Night.

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Starting Out

Years back, far earlier in time than I want to recount here, I participated in National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), well before the current unpleasantness regarding inappropriate behavior between (I’m trying to recall) volunteers for the organization and underage participants.

Regardless, even though I only completed the monthly novel writing challenge once, it was a great influence on my thinking. Part of it was a matter of math. I knew if an author managed to write 1,667 words per day, they would be able to create a 50,000 page manuscript by the end of the 30-day period of November when NaNoWriMo took place.

After a while, I began to wonder if there was a more sustainable pace I could maintain over time. 1,667 words a day is a bit of a haul, especially when you’re someone like me who has a day job and maybe even kids to help look after. Eventually, I decided to set a quota of 500 words a day. It was less than a third of the pace of NaNoWriMo, but it was a pace I thought I could possibly sustain day in and day out. That’s where it began.