4thWall

Stephen King famously writes at least 2,000 words a day. One of the things I heard over and over again this past year from a host of different teachers, advisors and professional writers was, “Keep writing.” And though this seems rather unremarkable at first, now I’m starting to appreciate why it’s such important advice and not simply duh-you-idiot pseudo wisdom; for even as an unemployed student who sits at his apartment all day working on a writing mentorship, it’s been hard to keep writing. Networking, applying for jobs, and bugging my mentor about our next meeting can often feel like they require more urgent attention than opening a notebook or fresh Word document and writing a couple hundred words. Oddly enough, this blog has provided me with a required daily writing time that I might otherwise miss. In my last couple posts I championed keeping a notebook or journal with you to record random thoughts and observations. Now I resolve to return to the pages of my diary and expand on those random thoughts. To hold myself accountable, practicing now for when I actually have a job and no longer have this blog, I will set aside a few minutes each day to write a paragraph or two, to develop a character sketch, to add to a script. I will keep writing! Don’t get me wrong, there are days when I do nothing but write, but that writing’s usually oriented toward some larger project or looming deadline. But now I’ll set a daily deadline for myself. I’ll start with one tenth of Stephen King’s quota: 200 words a day. Fortunately, this post is at 277, so it’s time to eat some lunch.