So there’s this saying that floats around, and there might be science fiction lore that surrounds this, but it says, basically that every writer has about a million words of crap in them that they just have to get out. After you write the first million, the thought is that you’ve written a certain number of words, you’ve learned how to write, found your voice, learned what you’re interested in and gotten over your youth, which makes you prone to writing all manner of foolishness.
Now it’s of course a rough estimate--your milage may vary--but I think being ok with the fact that I’m still learning, that it’s ok to not be perfect, because after, I’m still under my million words. If I’m still writing crap at 1,500,000 words I might get a little ticked, but where I am right now, it’s ok.
I have an informal tally of my fiction writing at about 150k. I wrote a novel in high school that was 100k, I have this novella (32k), I have about 10k in station keeping, and about 20k in the the project that preceded station keeping, not to mention, a couple of assorted little projects that never panned out. It seems like a good number.
I, on a whim, installed plugins that basically do a worcount on your wordpress (blog) postings and archives. In the past five years of TealArt, we have amassed a total of 269k words, 214k of which are mine. In four months of tychoish, I’ve written 69k words.
I think it’s time to readjust the crapo-meter a bit.