My Wordy Journey: Day 1

Why would anyone do this?

Mar 02, 2022

I was reading *cough* skimming for class *cough* Derrick Jensen’s Walking on Water a few months ago, and I came across a line which read:

"Someone had told me, you’re not a real writer until you’ve written a million words…".

Well anonymous person in some other dude’s book, challenge accepted. I’m going to write a million (1,000,000) words. My plan is to write a thousand words a day for a little over two years, but seriously who has the capacity to commit to something that long term? A lot of people? Oh…

Anyway, smash cut to a childhood flashback:

When I was a gangly youth I read fantasy, Sci-Fi, historical fiction - you name it, I tore through that shit like it was going out of style. Often I would be found sitting, legs folded in one position, staring deadpan at an open book for hours, unmoving - you know, like kids do. While I was catatonic in reality, in my head I was practicing my sand walk on the dunes of Arrakis. Or I was partaking in a breathtaking feast spread out in the Redwall abbey. Or… Okay you get the picture, I liked reading. Still do.

Before I lose my train of thought, I want to draw your attention, my many readers, back to the aforementioned quote. Notice, it does not say that writing a million words makes you a real writer. Oh no no no, I could feasibly write an essay every day for two years, and still have nothing to show for it. Actually, that’s probably the most likely scenario, given the amount of people that I’m sure would love to write professionally and yet fail. But alas, this is a personal challenge that will at least get me writing. Maybe some people will be entertained by it, and want to come back and read every day. Maybe some of my friends or family will get an insight into my brain and see what the motion of my internal ocean looks like. Maybe.

The point of all of this is to say that I like books, books are cool, I want to write a good fuckin’ book. So, I am going to write a thousand words every day for two-ish years, and we’ll see where it goes. What am I at? Three hundred? Holy shit. Okay, so maybe it’s going to take me four years, five hundred words a day. Yeah, you know what? It’s Day One and I’m changing it up - making adjustments on the fly. I think five hundred is probably good. Plus nobody wants to read a thousand words in a blog post, right?

So, what can you expect from this newsletter / blog / rambling wall of text? Exactly that. Whatever gnarly stew is simmering in my head that day will be violently expelled onto this page, and you can read it. You’re so welcome! Sometimes it will be something grounded in reality, but other times I may have a short story to write. Even other-er times I may just breathe some life into some characters I’ve been thinking about. I’m keeping this as fast and loose as possible so that I keep actually doing this.

Hmm, now that I’m all the way down here past five hundred words, I’m thinking that maybe I do have it in me to write a thousand words. Up there, when I was at only three hundred words it seemed much more daunting. The astute among you may be thinking to yourself, “That last part he just wrote to bump up his word count”. And yes you may be correct, but the even more astute among you would realize that this whole time I’ve just been writing to bump up my word count! Insert villainous laughter here.

Oh, I should probably address the title of this blog, “Words are Hard”. Hmm, not much to unpack there, words are just hard. Pretty much everybody uses words. Some people use words better than others. Some people take words and arrange them in such a way that makes you wonder, “do we really need language at all if sentences like that are allowed to exist? Maybe we should just call it quits on the whole communicating thing.” .

But seriously, words are hard. Most people indeed use words, but great authors really and truly appreciate words. I think of great authors like gold panners (is that a word?). They sift through a bunch of useless gunk words to find the one perfect word to encapsulate the idea they’re trying to convey, and rocket that shit through your eyes into your brain. And then they do that for every single word. I mean I don’t know that for certain, but go read some Tolkien and try to find a single place where you could think of a different word that would better suit it’s place in the story.

This got very stream of consciousness, I’m realizing now. I love the ‘term stream of consciousness’ because it sounds so legitimate. Really it’s just a nice way of saying word diarrhea, right? Oh, that person couldn’t fake being organized if they had a gun to their head? So stream of consciousness.

What are we at, almost nine hundred words? Well I’ll let you go here, I’m a thoroughly juiced orange. Class dismissed. Over and out. Don’t mind me, just here getting a few words in at the end. No seriously, you can go, there’s nothing keeping you here. It’s not like I would know if you read the first two sentences and left. Most people probably stopped reading already, so I don’t feel guilty. Actually, potentially no one will read this and I’ll have been addressing the cold, empty void that is cyberspace. Oh! Maybe in say a thousand years, some faction of the galactic AI consciousness will discover this in some internet archive somewhere and use it for some grand AI purpose. Those darn AI and their grand purposes… Got to a thousand!