At the beginning of the year I said that I was going to write a million words in a year, the idea behind this was because I'd attended a seminar the previous year that said that people in the north of England don't write, and those that do write, either write local pieces that only interest local people, or they write things about things going on in London, because that's the only place that has any interest...
I disagreed, and so the challenge was made, I write a million word in a year, the north of england (all of it) matches me word for word. There was going to be a running total, with the north on one side and me on the other, but that never quite materialised, so I continued on the with the challenge anyway, for myself if nothing else, to prove that it can be done.
And here's the thing about that, I know that there's no way I can prove I've done a million words in a year, there's no way I can prove that all the words up on here are all done this year, it's childs play to be able to make new documents and copy/paste from older work, presenting it as this years work, so I'm not looking to lay the proof down like that. I know that the wordcount I've got up on here is accurate, and I know that it's all this year, and in this endeavour, that's all that matters.
Those who know me know that I don't make challenges I can't succeed in, and they know that I can do this, even if it's just for myself, I'm two novels finished this year, two more halfway through, more than a hundred opinion pieces, and many more left over, so I have confidence that I'm going to manage it, but even so, anyone else out there writing, it'd be great to hear from all of you, to see how you're doing, just to know that everyone else out there is also writing.
So here's me, caught up for the first time in several months after a few conventions and a serious car crash that really dented the word count for some time, and now cheerful, because I've managed to get my OCD regarding notebooks on notebook stories (www.notebookstories.com), and for the first time in a long time, I'm feeling very optimistic about managing this.
This is John Dodd in the Socialist Republic of South Yorkshire and the best of the day England, wherever you are...
