1500 words

The most important, A number one, motivator for a writer - at least for me - is readers. If my income depended on my writing unrelated to any readers, perhaps I would find motivation in that but we'll never find out since any economic incentive is pretty likely to be dependent on, yeah, that's right: readers.

So, with mixed feelings, today I'm saying goodbye to my constant bad conscience. Let me explain very briefly.

I haven't written much since around the time I turned 20, but about 2 years ago the desire to tell stories awoke in me again. I think it's a year ago but it may actually be slightly longer, that Sean and I spent a rather long time talking about writing on one of the company parties (a.k.a. "mingles").

Suddenly I realized I had stories I wanted to tell and once I realized that, I also realized that I loved telling stories. Actually, what I love is dominating other peoples' minds, but nevermind that.

When Sean and I were sitting there we agreed (I think) that we'd actually, finally, write stuff and we'd show each other and keep reading and supporting. I'm a bit hazy on what we actually said but this has not stopped me from considering my part of the deal as binding. So since that party, I've thought about what I was writing in my head every time I passed Sean at work, with a pang of bad conscience for not putting enough on paper to show.

Sean must have had at least some similar memories of the evening, cause he's the only follower this blog has.

I just said goodbye to Sean at work, since he's leaving for a new job. That sort of leaves me with less of an incentive to write. We can't have that. So I think I'll sign up for NaNoWriMo, which is shorthand for National Novel Writing Month, which is a campaign to encourage people to write. (I'm not very "national" where the campaign exists but I really couldn't care less) The aim is to help people get a novel written - you write at least 1500 words every day in November, and tweet your page count twice a day. Like so.

1500 words is less than you think, once you start rambling. It's also more than you think, once you start to apply standards and being selective. This, for instance, is too little, and probably not good enough.

Cheers Sean, good luck!