Counting Words

Luckily I was born at a time where everything can be collected and stored in your hard drive. So when I started writing at the age of nine, the computer --Microsoft Word-- had already been invented. This is why I have most of my writing saved on my hard drive. Even when I switched computers, I copied all my files over to a hard drive and then onto my new computer.

Which leads me to today, when I was excruciatingly bored, so I decided to count all the words I've written. It was a task that literally took an hour and a half of opening files, checking the word count, adding it to my calculator, closing the file, and then moving onto the next. How many words (roughly) have I written since I was nine years old (I'm eighteen now)? Drum roll please....

402, 989 words.

While I was going through some of my old stories, I felt nostalgic. There are some stories in my hard drive that are just gathering dust because I abandoned them in favor of another more interesting plot twist. I felt nostalgic for the times when I actually had loads and loads of time to write. Nowadays, I have other priorities, including college, internships, and a social life. I don't get as much time to write as I used to. It makes me sad to look back and see all those half-written stories. But it also gives me hope: I've made it this far. Whose to say I won't go further?

One million words, here I come!

So what about you? What's your word count? Do you have regrets about unfinished stories?

The 10,000 Hour Rule

Apparently, it takes ten thousand hours to become a world expert in something. Whether it be computer programming (ahem, Bill Gates), hockey, composing music, or even writing.

I found this interesting little fact out by reading Malcolm Gladwell's thought-provoking book, Outliers: the story of Success. In Outliers, Malcolm Gladwell explains how and why some people are successful and why some people are not, bringing up the surprising fact that most of our success is a matter of chance, luck, and practice--not just bare talent. According to Gladwell's expert calculations and interviews with success stories, it takes about 10,000 hours of practice to become the "best."

Mozart followed the Ten Thousand Hour rule. Bill Gates followed the Ten Thousand Hour rule. And they were all successful in their respective fields. So I thought to myself, why don't I follow the Ten Thousand Hour rule?

It's been my dream to be a writer ever since I was nine. I truly wish to become an expert in the art and perhaps if I try to reach the golden Ten Thousand, I might have a chance at making writing an actual career.

By my calculations, I have roughly 3000 hours already done. I've been writing recreationally since I was nine and have completed three novels already. Each of those three novels required five hours a day, seven days a week, three months to each novel, which roughly totals 1365 hours. In addition, I also have a lot of incomplete work (a novel two chapters away from being completed, a story just about to get interesting, etc) that's total word count would probably be a little less than the total of the three completed novels so let's say that is another 1365 hours as well. THen there is my current work. I've been working on it on and off since January about three hours per day, five days a week so roughly speaking, I have spent 390 hours on it so far for a grand total of 3120 hours. Of course, this is all speculation so I'll round it down to 3,000 hours so I have a clean number to start my actual count on.

I am going to log my hours officially to see how much time I spend writing. Getting to 10,000 hours of writing time is going to be long, hard, difficult task and I doubt I'll be able to see it to it's fullest, especially considering that 10,000 hours is more hours than they are in a single year.

I've decided on small steps. Let's start off with how many hours I can do in a year. From July 9, 2013 to July 9, 2014. Can I do a thousand hours? Can it be done?

A girl can dream, right?