I have come at writing backwards. With the exception of a few poems, and some very intermittent journal entries along the way I made no real stab at being a writer until last year’s NaNoWriMo. In one month I wrote a full blown 52,000 word awful first draft of a fantasy novel – Servants of the Lich King.

Between then, and this years effort for NaNoWriMo, The Undead and the In Love, I managed to write only one short story, and that to second draft status. But, along the way I did manage to read a whole pack of books about writing – How To, Autobiographies of writers, and collections of interviews of writers, plus a bunch of magazine articles. They have all pointed to one thing – I need to write lots, and as a matter of course, to get better. Most writers started with short works and hike their way up. Quite a few make a primary career out of short fiction, and get amazingly good at it. Some go on to write 1,000 page monstrosities. But they all write lots.

This seems like easy logic, but the defining point of common sense has always been that it isn’t. I am learning though, and my journal is becoming my friend. I have taken up the practice of adding a minimum of 300 words a day to whatever project is my primary, and writing additional journal entries as they occur. Additionally, I am adopting the guideline of Natalie Goldberg, in her book, Writing Down the Bones, of filing one notebook per month with whatever writing I can.

It’s a brave new world, and I feel fortunate to be in it.