10,190

Ten thousand, one hundred and ninety. That's how many words I assembled into sentences, paragraphs and the delicate bud of a story this weekend that marked the start of my 30 day/50,000 word novel writing project. It feels absolutely amazing.

Before Day 1 arrived I was really nervous about what I had set myself up for. I had an idea in my head of what I wanted to write but since I had never done something so big before I wondered if I could really find enough ideas to keep the story going for 50,000 words. Fifty thousand. Imagine that the Winnipeg Stadium sold out for a Bomber game and every person who was in attendance brought with them a word, some even brought the same word, like there were a lot of and's and the's and such. The stadium's capacity is 29,533 so all together they would still be 20,467 words short. Imagine that Winnipeg was hosting the Grey Cup and we put in the temporary seating in the south end and fans from Saskatchewan, BC, Alberta, Ontario and Montreal showed up with their words. I would still be short by just over 5,000 words (yes, the french ones from Montreal would count, although it might confuse things a bit). Writing a short novel is bigger than a Winnipeg Football game. Suddenly singing the national anthem before the kickoff seems less scary.

Everything they say about the writing process is true. It's really amazing what comes out when you just sit down and commit yourself to hammering something out but leave your internal editor in another room. The characters take on a life of their own and start doing funny things. New people show up. Crazy things happen. The story just pours out like sand. I really had no idea I could do this.

On Thursday night Lisa picked up one of the young adult books I'm reading. She took a peek at it and laughed. "You can write better than this," she said. Right now the writing isn't about quality. It's all about quantity. Once the first draft is down I can go back and edit and tweak but it's nice when people let you know that they think you can do something amazing.


In the writing class I took in the fall one of my instructor's favourite quotes was from Stephen King who said, "You must not come lightly to the blank page." I liked the quote too and appreciated King's book On Writing, but I think it can still make writing sound intimidating. So these are my words of advice (if I may offer them now, even though I am still 40,000 words away from the finish line): Approach the page. Do it with anxiety, do it with cockiness, do it with the power of Zen, I don't think it matters; just get yourself and your pen to the page and let yourself go. While you're there, enjoy the trip.