One Million Words
There’s a myth in the writing community that a beginning writer needs to write one million words – before he or she is qualified to start actually writing as a legitimate “writer”. I call it a myth because it’s true, you do, and as a fictionalist, realize that myth is much truer than fact.
Fact is myth in fact, and I can prove it, but only if you let me use words. If I have to use math, then okay, I guess facts is facts, but only then.
You see, I’ve done my mil, so am now capable of making words do some pretty fancy dancin’ or very creepy stuff, depending on one’s point of view. Words are nothing but practice for making love, after all, not something one can depend on for truth. That only comes during orgasm or wordless prayer, if then.
When I was a freshie, writing-wise, in my twenties and very proud of all my teen-angst poetry, I first heard the First Million Words theory. Man was I bummed. What am I wasting my time for then? A million? Are you pooping me? No way. Every word I wrote was precious and dear and darling, and very, very difficult to come up with. That was it. I was done.
Well, turned out I wasn’t done. After another couple decades of teen-angst poems, I turned to prose and pumped out my millionth word somewhere during my late forties, I reckon. I began to grok.
Still a long long way from total grokage, but we’re getting there. The main thing to remember about writing is to stay as dumb as possible for as long as you can; just keep writing no matter what. Unfortunately, you will eventually start to become rather wise, thus taking half the fun out of the whole thing, but that’s the price you have to pay for being a writer. As Flannery O’Connor said, you will know the truth and it will make you odd.
Oh well, it’s worth it, if you like books better than people. (Don’t tell anybody I said that, though you may discuss it with a book if you wish.) Reading isn’t nearly as much fun as it was before I passed my mil, though. Reading has become writing, or somewhat akin to work. Remember that before you decide to become a writer, young scout of life, you may be wrecking the joyful bliss of reading. Nevermore will you be able to dance with a mediocre writer like gods through a tulip-field. You will become two clumsy and rather scared amateurs stumbling through the long-lost labyrinth of language, languishing in the lurid leprosy of lapses. It’s horrible, believe me. I used to have a magnificent passion for crappy fiction. Alas, no more.
God bless those non-great writers who did the best they could. They told me stories, which is all I could ever ask, before I became a writer, or Mr. Picky-Butt, as I now call myself in sadder times.
How to Write Your First Million Words in Three Years:
Write for half an hour a day.
That’s it. If you can do that you’re golden. You have to write fast, about thirty words a minute, but if you don’t care what you write, it’s easy. They never said they had to be a million good words. Just words.
Write about anything: you, me, love, hate, cats, dogs, birds, a pixel. It doesn’t matter. Good, bad, or indifferent, all they are is words, and you my friend are piling them up. One thousand words a day. They say in competitive sports that only perfect practice makes perfect, but that’s not true for the writing profession. In writing, only words make perfect.
“We work in the dark. We do what we can. We give what we have. Our doubt is our passion, and our passion is our task. The rest is the madness of art.” ~ Henry James
Author: Tom Howe
Article Source: EzineArticles.com
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