I read Dean Wesley Smith’s blog a lot. You can find it at this link. Whilst I don’t really like the busy design of his site, the fact is his success is undoubtable (he has written over a hundred novels) and his insights are solid.
In short, he has made a full living out of writing for an extended period.
Something that Dean Wesley Smith does is update his blog every single day. Sometimes it is just a place-holder post – like it has been during the storms and subsequent holiday season recently. Sometimes it’s chapters of upcoming non-fiction books or other how-to-write topics.
Nearly all of it is created from insights that a writer simply discovers or intuits when they actually go about their business during the day.
I am going to attempt to do the same.
One of the most interesting things about writing for me is that I both love it and yet procrastinate about it. Writing everyday is a form of chain building – I have to write every day or I break the chain.
By writing this article I am building accountability into the system.
If you look at some of my monthly reports, you will see that I write most days. In some ways, I am already prolific as a writer. I write on average around fifty to a hundred thousand words a month.
It isn’t enough though.
Writing is my full time job, and I should treat it as such. If you are hoping to be a full time writer, then you should treat it as such too.
I have written about the mathematics of writing every day in one of the articles I wrote in December. In short, my word count could easily be a lot higher than fifty thousand a month. It could be higher than fifty thousand a week.
So that is what I am going to do. Start writing a daily blog, without fail.
Sometimes it will be interesting. Sometimes it probably won’t. If we are going to be awesome writers though, we need to account for our time and we need to think of the words we write as being assets which are going to drive us in the future.
Essentially, this new series is going to be a log of my new approach to writing, which I will discuss in detail on subsequent days.
Happy New Year Everyone!