500 words...

As I keep nagging my daughter: to be a writer you have to write and to my mind that means writing at least five hundred words a day. Five hundred tiny words; preferably strung into a semblance of sentences and paragraphs, preferably with an attempt at punctuation - although this becomes increasing personal and more difficult to define the more you put words to the page.

Five hundred words. What’s so hard about that?

Since starting this piece I’ve already written 81 words, and I haven’t really said very much at all. So, I ask her, what is so jolly difficult about getting down 500 measly words? Although I don’t actually use the jolly in this conversation, jolly is just a word for writing down to make it appear I’m educated or living in the 1920’s.

I’m not feeling creative. I’ve got writer’s block. She says.

Writers block? What’s that? Do you think plumbers get days when they aren’t inspired to fit new taps? Do they get plumbers block do you think? And what about surgeons, do you think that they have surgeons block?

Awfully sorry Mr Height, no operation today. I simply can’t perform it. I have surgeon’s block.

Surgeons block my arse. Well no, hopefully not that.

See, I’m already up to 215 words and I haven’t even got started yet.

Of course, I’ve already written almost six hundred words today. I had an article about the Ashes tour in Australia to get out. Thank goodness I wasn’t gripped by writer’s block just as I was about to start writing it. I’m so pleased that I was inspired enough to be able to cobble together an article about cricket – a sport I know practically nothing about – and not miss my deadline…

Writing is a job you see. As Hemingway used to say at dinner parties: “There is nothing to writing. All you do is sit down at a typewriter and bleed.” 

Or alternatively as Dan Poynter once wrote: “If you wait for inspiration to write; you’re not a writer, you’re a waiter.” (smiley face)

I could go on with the quotes for the rest of my five hundred. But the point is: writing is 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. If you wait for inspiration you’ll never do much writing and if you don’t do much writing you’ll never be a writer. The clue’s in the title you see. You don’t become a writer by not writing.

Well, I’m at just over 400. So I guess it’s time I started winding it up, rounding it down, and generally getting out of your hair.

I’ve been writing for a while now. The more I do it, the more I have to do it. There are times that I question why I do it, and other times I don’t need to question why at all. Some days it’s all I can do to string a few ‘not very good words’ together, other days the words simply pour out. I just write.

500