50,000 Words In 7 Months

Have you ever wondered what it takes to write 50,000 words? It’s kinda baked my noodle. Every November, people try to do it in one month to write a novel! It took me 7 months of blogging this year, January through July, to hit the big 50k.

Stats

I’m one of those WordPress bloggers who looks at my blog stats to see how it’s going. I write many words, so I see many numbers. Well, hopefully. But do the metrics truly measure the merit of my missives? I don’t know. But I enjoyed stringing a bunch of ‘m’ words together just now. So there’s that ;).

Near the end of July, I noticed my blog stats for the year so far: total number of posts I’ve written, how many comments and likes, etc. My average number of words per post is 562. Not bad I guess.
Words

Then I saw the total number of words I wrote this year: about 48,500. My eyes blinked. And stared. My brain smoothly churned, turning that number over. Synapses fired off to others, and NaNoWriMo came to the forefront of my mind. That’s the month-long writing blitz aspiring authors buckle-up for each year to punch out a novel. The big goal is 50,000 words.

Goals

For me, my big goal in blogging is to stick with it and enjoy it for the long haul. It’s about duration, discipline, and dedication. All it takes is a post here and there, nothing too long or fancy. Simple prose.

As long as I’m blogging: #amwriting. Over time, all those words add up. I just didn’t realize how fast or slow that was happening.

It took 7 months to reach 50,000 words. Now I wonder, could I have written a novel in that time?

Let’s say I started the year with the goal of gaining words instead of losing weight: “this year, I’m gonna write a book!” Had I set that goal and stuck with it, I guess now I could be self-publishing an e-book. But something tells me there’s more to penning fiction than just time on the clock. Many have proven that if you push hard, it only takes about 4 weeks to write a book start to finish.

Dreams

Given my circumstances, I don’t know if it’s feasible for me to attempt writing a novel in a month, or at all. But as I continue to practice writing in whatever form, I do keep my novella dreams nearby. My eyes look-out for inspiration and motivation to take on a chance to produce a work of fiction. Like I’ve said, someday.

Have you tried writing a book? How many words do you write daily?