Day Six - The speed of writing

I can type (at full speed) at around sixty words per minute, of things I would have said would have been useful when I learned them at YTS (that's Youth Training Scheme for those not from England), I would have said that photocopier maintenance and typing would have been the least useful, and yet here we are, Twenty two years on and what skills do I use most from that course?

Not telephonic correctness, I can tell you that...

When engaged in a project like this, it comes home not how fast you type, but how long you can type for.  I got home this evening and honestly thought that there wasn't a chance I was going to make word count for today, but funny thing, three hours later, the count is done.  If i'd been typing at full speed, the count would have been done in less than an hour, but between thinking, making changes as I go, and sometimes getting caught on the barb of the story as more of it unfolds in my head, I was working at about a third of top speed.  

Which leads to the subject for today, which is when you're writing, are you racing for the end of it, or are you enjoying the journey of writing it?

I've only once done something like this before, and it was more than ten years ago (in truth it was before the turn of the century), and I enjoyed the writing of it more than anything I've done since, but a lot of things have changed since that man.  But I'm left with a quandry now.  Left to run, I could keep with this forever, but then it's not a novel, it's a story, and I'm not worried presently about keeping the word count down so it can fit in a book, but at the same time I'm aware that trying to keep up with so many characters and plot points can fatigue people (and I know I haven't introduced many yet, but they're coming.), so it's a question of short sharp bang, or rolling thunder that keeps on rolling...

This is John Dodd in the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire and Goodnight England, Wherever you are...