2 Million Words
They say that your first million words are practice…
It’s hard to nail down who actually said that first. It’s fairly common advice given to new writers, young writers, writers who haven’t published yet or are just finishing up their debut novel with hopes and dreams and aspirations.
And it’s not bad advice, really.
It hearkens back to the idea that you have to practice before you get good at something. Sometimes you have to practice a lot.
And I agree with that. I can’t just decide, for example, to start running one day and then go out and expect to win a race of any length the next day without any practice or conditioning. I’ve had to explain this to my kids: just because you want to be good at something doesn’t mean it’ll automatically come easy for you. You have to practice. You won’t get better at drawing or guitar or piano or archery if you don’t practice. Practice makes better. (Let’s be totally real, it doesn’t usually result in perfection. And that whole “perfect practice makes perfect” is like Yoda-speak that makes less than no sense. If my practice is already perfect, then it’s not really practice, now is it?)
But along with this advice often comes the idea that you should just walk away from those first million words when you’ve written them. Accept that none of them can ever be good enough to publish, and discard them.
I don’t necessarily agree with that part.
Sure, some of those early words probably shouldn’t see the light of day. I definitely have a ton of various writings that I don’t think I’d ever be able to sufficiently polish to be willing to share with anyone else.
But to throw all of them away? To walk away without looking back?
Where do you even start keeping track? Do you count every single word you ever write? Those first scrawled lines of notes in kindergarten that tend to read something like, “Dear Grampa, How are you? I miss you. Please rite back soon. Love, Jenelle”?
Do those words count?
I don’t know where to start counting.
But if we base my writing word-count solely and specifically on “stories I’ve written” then if I’d taken this advice, I never would have published any of the books in the Minstrel’s Song series or Stone Curse, because they were solidly inside that first million words.
Of course, there’s a lot of writing I can’t easily account for. Words that I wrote for papers for school, book reports, creative writing assignments that I’ve lost, journal entries I wrote by hand, stories I know I wrote but have no idea where they ended up… maybe there are enough of them that by the time I got to King’s Warrior I’d already hit that million words written.
It’s possible.
Just this blog alone probably has a million words written on it, though I don’t have any sort of easy way to tally them up. My best conservative estimate is that there are at least 700,000 words contained here across my posts… and that was my estimate from a few years ago!
All that to say, I haven’t kept impeccable records of my own word-counts. I sometimes wish I had, but there are words you just can’t account for. Writing is such a huge part of my life. In some respects, I’m almost always writing something: jotting down a recipe, writing an email or letter to a friend, composing a post here or on other social media, recording the hysterical things my hobbits say on a daily basis.
But, today I wanted to share a milestone I can celebrate.
Two Million Words
Two million, eighty-four thousand, six hundred twenty-seven, to be precise.
That number is based solely on stories I’ve written that I have on my computer and can therefore tally the word counts of with accuracy. It does not include school assignments, letters, journal entries, poetry, or blog posts.
And while that number looks so massive when I type it out… it sort of feels like I don’t have a whole lot to show for it.
Yet.
I have SEVEN brand new books coming in the very near future. I am planning on starting the releases of these new stories next summer, and I will soon have a lot more information to share about these new novels and what you can expect and when you can expect them, and how you can help me get them to you as soon as possible.
And I have outlines and the beginnings of even more stories to come after that!
Thank you for your patience with me as I know I’ve gone pretty quiet in all the normal places lately. I’m working hard on this next million words, and I’m already starting to plan out the million that will come after them. I’m excited. I have so many stories to write, so many new characters to introduce you to, so many new worlds for you to explore, and I am so excited to share them all.
But for now, I’m just over here celebrating this epic milestone quietly. I feel like there should be some sort of fanfare: fireworks, a party cannon of exploding confetti, or maybe a parade. A parade would be nice…
There wasn’t really any of that. It’s just a little thing. I didn’t even know I’d achieved it when it happened. It feels like that two millionth word should have been marked. It should have been something important. But let’s be honest, it was probably something super mundane like, “the.”
Next year, there will be time for fanfare.
For now, we’ll just mark it with a blog post.
And maybe a piece of chocolate cake.
Thanks for celebrating with me, dear Reader. You’re one of those special people I knew would understand.
What about you, dear Reader? What do you think of the popular advice to young writers about that first million words being just practice? Or of throwing away all of those first million words? Do you think that there is any place for the improvement that editing brings inside that first million words?
Where would you tell a young writer to start counting?
Are there any other common pieces of writing advice you’ve come across that you agree with? What about ones you don’t agree with?