Taking a Break
Due to needing to drive forty-two hours and 2,818 miles in the next four days, I have gotten out ahead of my normal writing tasks by writing five stories and loading them into the blog system for times release daily over the next five days (I am taking the added precaution of loading in one for next Sunday in case I need a recovery day). This is a nice feature of the blogging software I use since I am determined to keep to task and write at least 1,200 words per day every day. I may still find time to write in the evening before bed while on the road, but I do not want to risk my 245-day streak I am on at present.
I started this blog last February and have so far written 434 posts, totaling 509,000 words. By most standards, that is over five books worth of words. People ask me all the time if I am planning on compiling the posts into a book and my answer is a decided shrug. I am writing to practice writing and express myself. If something else is to be done with these posts I will decide that later.
I am forced by virtue of my aggressive driving schedule to take a break from forced writing over the next few days. That is probably a good thing, but I really do enjoy writing and don’t consider it in the least to be a chore. I know some people don’t like writing, but that is where practicing comes into play. The more I write, the more I like writing. There is a fluidity that comes after writing a lot and while I do occasionally wonder if I’m repeating myself, I generally feel that it keeps my wits about me and makes me sharper for the research and writing I do.
As I have begun to make better use of the timed release feature of my blog software, I have begun thinking more about the timeliness of any given post. Some are based very much on current events and can get out of date very easily. Others that are based on my own doings can become equally stale if not published and read more or less in a timely manner. I think writing each day forces me to write about things going on around me rather than burrowing deeply into some fictional world that is timeless. I like being somewhat current in my thinking and I even see value in looking aback on writings that reflect my thinking of that moment. That all means that when I post a story for future publication, I spend a moment or two thinking about what it will feel like for that to get published when it is scheduled.
I wrote these next five stories that are on tap during my travels to be more generic and less time-dependent. Let’s see how I do with that. I will have Kim read them aloud to me while I drive each day to see how they feel in a more objective sense. I think reading stories aloud is a critical part of the review process. I usually inflict that sentence on Kim, so it is only fair that she subject me to that same treatment while I drive. It will all help me see my work from the eyes of the reader/listener so it should help me become a better writer for it all.
So, while I say I may be taking a break by not doing too much writing while driving twelve hours per day, the truth is that I am always writing in my head. I would argue that storytellers never stop creating stories about what they see going on around them. That is what I find myself doing every day. The trick for someone like me is to hone the skill of turning a story in my head into a story on paper. That is why I write 1,200 words on average per day. In the Malcolm Gladwell school of expertise that means I have put in about 1,000 hours on this blog this year. In addition to that, I have put 278 pages on paper for a book I am writing about my motorcycle group. I see that as another 1,000 hours more or less this year. If I assume I put in about 2,000 hours writing in 2018 and 3,000 in 2017 (the year I wrote four books), I think I can claim to be zeroing in on my Gladwell expert level of 10,000.
I’m not sure why I want to be an expert writer, as I don’t aspire to being a great author or seller of books. There was a time when I thought I might like that, but then I wrote a book (Gulag 401-k) for which I had great hopes. It received a great review from Kirkus and Goodreads gave it five stars. That all gave me optimism that there was a commercial future for the book. I spent the money on promotion as best I could determine. Everything I tried to raise interest or elevate profile fell short. I have decided that lightning has to strike for a writer to catch fire with a large readership.
I think if you look at where lightning has been striking lately, I don’t have any empirical evidence, but my anecdotal evidence is that like the boom in cable news viewership due to the outrageous shenanigans in Washington D.C., many of the books that are catching fire in 2019 are political fact-based thrillers about the Russian, Ukrainian, Mexican border, North Korean, China/Hong Kong, and even Saudi Arabian scandals. I can’t avoid the topic in my blog stories (it is simply too amazing to ignore many days), but I generally don’t have any information edge that gives my writing a blockbuster aspect to it. I think I can sort out, synthesize and clarify issues, but that’s simply not enough to make for a commercial book in my opinion.
Over the next four days my head will be filled with MSNBC via SiriusXM and several teed up books via Audible. I may learn things or spur things that I’m driven to write about, but in the off-chance that I’m happy just listening and absorbing, just assume I’m taking a short break and will be back at it soon from my desk, deck or hot tub in San Diego.