500-a-day

I rely too much on having "good" blog ideas. If I don’t have them, like tonight, I may not write anything, thus not meeting the 500-words-a-day quota that I set for myself back in June.

I save every 500 word minimum piece to a specific folder. I opened that folder today and read some entries from the beginning in June to the most recent ones in November and October. The feelings and events I have recorded since then are priceless. There are a couple entries I wrote when I was so pissed off that I would be embarrassed to put them on here. No joke, I read through one this morning and the first sentence shocked me. I wrote that? Why was I so pissed off? I read a little more and instantly remembered the reason for this rant of complaints and expletives. When I got to the end I leaned back in my chair and told myself, “That is awesome.” Not awesome that I was so pissed off that day, but so awesome that I have captured such raw emotion.

500 words all came about because I wasn’t writing enough. Book after book on writing tells you to write, write, write, and read, read, read. In June, something hit me. I am never going to make it if I don’t start writing more. I was already a regular reader, but I didn’t write more than three times a week. Now, if I go a day without getting something on this blog, or in that folder on my computer, I feel like I am going to never become a good writer, which is ridiculous, but that is what goes through my head. I have a safe, healthy addiction to this now and I am not going to stop. There are days that I wonder about what it must be like to be a published author. There are days that I feel like abandoning this dream of mine: to have my words make someone feel good to be alive, for my words to have a soul, for something I write to outlive me. And there are days that I think this pursuit is so selfish and it is all about me. On days that I hear from you about something you read and liked I feel pretty damn good about pursuing this. I write alone, you read alone, but what makes it really worth it is when I know my words have given you company.