31 Day Challenge

At the other end of this link - 31 Day Challenge - is an article about "The System I Used to Write 5 Books and Over 1,000 Blog Posts." It prescribes writing 500 words a day. I thought the article was interesting enough to post, but I don't really plan to follow it. You see, since I do the majority of my writing in a spiral notebook, it's not really about a word count - it's about pages. For example, in the 10 year project spiral notebook for this month, I'm on page 60. Because there are 92 pages in the section of this 200 page college-ruled notebook, I create a schedule with target pages. I am "scheduled" to begin writing on page 61 tomorrow and to write until the end of page 64. On Wednesday, 8/24, I am scheduled to begin writing on page 65. I have the rest of the section "scheduled" out so that I end it on Wednesday, 8/31. To count the number of words I write or to not write in the spiral notebook so that I could write in MS Word and quickly calculate a page count would throw my writing addiction off. Thus, I linked to the article above as a reminder to myself that if I ever reach a point where I don't want to write in a spiral notebook, there are alternatives.

In related news, I was in Lansing, IA, over the weekend. Karen, Lou, Jean & I went to a store called HorsFalls. I found 3 x 200 page hard-cover journals. The sticker on the outside said they were normally $10 but on sale for $5. Since I didn't know when I would be at that store again, I bought all of them. I'm unsure how they will fit into the current 10 year project as I already have 24 x 200 page college-ruled notebooks purchased and a month/year combination assigned to each. My initial thought was to use them for my sporadic series where I write each day about a specific pre-determined topic as a countdown to our wedding anniversary. Since our 25th wedding anniversary is in 2018, perhaps I can reserve one of these new journals for that. As for the other two, there's a possibility I will be "ahead" of my previously defined schedule and actually write in the section assigned to 12/2021 prior to 12/2021 and, thus, need to have another notebook or way to write. Right now, I am writing in the volume / section that was previously assigned to 11/2016. On 9/1/2016, I anticipate I will begin the section assigned to 12/2016, which means I am 3 months ahead of my schedule. Assuming that continues, I would be starting the 12/2021 section on 9/1/2021 and could easily see myself using one of these new journals for those months. As for the 3rd new journal, I don't have a 3rd idea for its use so I'll just keep it available.


All of this is to document that I do more writing than what I publish on this blog. I have thoughts and opinions I have judged to be private.