ONE THOUSAND WORDS

WJ+Caddy

I was fortunate to be able to spend sometime with one of my kids last night instant messaging (Iming). Walter James (WJ) is my writer as well as musician. He lives in Oregon with one of my other kids—Shelly and her husband. WJ IS 21 years old and is struggling with the world to carve his niche there in. Like any good, responsible writer—WJ has a day job making the payments of life as he can. He works at a Coffee Shop and does OK. He has a roof over his head, food in the fridge and a ride…a nice Caddy. One of the recurring discussions we have is how to keep focused writing. This can be a major challenge to anyone who is trying to establish himself or herself as any kind of a word smith: getting beyond the block. WJ shared with me that he has recently committed to writing 1000 words a day. He writes fiction and that’s cool and I’m impressed at his current output of content. He says he has been writing this volume for about two week. Wow! 14 thousand works. He is planning to have his novel hashed out in about three months if he can keep this schedule up. WJ writes in a two-hour block each day to produce his 1000 words. This is great. I wish I could do this. I may think about trying later on in the summer. I can make excuses of why I cannot not, the most obvious is time. I agree with WJ, let the words just flow get the 1000 words out and worry about editing at a later point in time i.e. rewrite. In this case quality will come after quantity. Still, the only time I do have to do such a project would be after the workday, when I am spent and burnt. There was talk at one time of coming in to work early and writing then—this was a major project that I was tying to get going with a writing guild I associate with. This has yet to materialize. Many days I am so exhausted following work that I just have to rest till bedtime. Weekends are taken up with home and fam responsibilities=excuses, EXCUSES, EXCUSES! This is what really scares me that I make all these stupid excuses…A WRTER WRITES, he does not make up uses. WJ does not and this really impressed me. Write On!