I’ve perhaps already written about this. If not on this blog then certainly on tumblr. On the night of January 17, 2024 I read a post on tumblr about some award winning author who writes something like 200 words a day. He is a writer as his primary occupation so the limit is not due to time constraints. It started my wheels turning on the idea that artistic progress need not be made in huge chunks of time.

Having gotten started on the idea I busted out my laptop and wrote down some words. At the time I think my goals was 500 words a day, because I knew that if I was really in the flow I could pound that out in about twenty minutes. I stuck with this for a long while. Every night before going to sleep I would use get out my laptop and write from bed. While the actual number of words goals has disappeared entirely (indeed I have many days when the number is 0, whether because I was thinking about the writing, or doing research, or I was editing and added as many words as I removed) I still continued to get out the laptop and work on my writing.

I’m still doing it to this day! This post is in fact, my words for the day.

This year I decided to start keeping a spreadsheet of how many words I actually write, the sort of work I’m doing (writing, editing, research, planning) and which project I’m working on. It’s actually been really exciting to see the actual word count rise. Without counting this post, my current wordcount for 2025 is 49,751 words. To me, this is incredible! Sure, it’s basically the end of September (and naturally, the year) but still! That’s nearly 50k words I would not have written or thought about because I never would have prioritized my writing over all my other creative endeavors.

It’s been really amazing actually. Before, I used to have to constantly take a lot of time and energy to prioritize what to work on. Now, I still do that, but writing no longer fights for that time. Writing has its own time and always gets done. The only times I don’t write is when I’m traveling or sick.

But the fact that I keep coming back and I can see the numbers of words go up (and the numbers of posts on the blog, the numbers of chapters in my novels, and so on) has been really encouraging. The idea that just a handful of words a day, can add up to lots of progress over time.

I want to build on this idea with my other artistic pursuits as well. I had intended to start doing 20 minutes in the middle of the day, just setting a timer and working on my art for a bit, but my oldest was home sick today so that kind of threw a wrench in the works. I know that it shouldn’t, that’s the whole point of the “little bit at a time” but there you have it. I also know that if I work out every day and do art every day I significantly lower my chances of turning into a rage monster, so I definitely need to figure out some sort of rhythm to make this work.

Tiny measures will result in big progress.