Looking back, and forward too

Sometimes it's useful to look back and assess how far we have, or have not, come on our paths of personal productivity, and then to build on that assessment with future practices which will help us go farther, do more, and reach our goals in the future. 

There.  That gets the management-speak crap out of the way for now, I guess.  It's what I get for coming in to work early and blogging in the quiet of my office in a business suit rather than at home in my pajamas. 

It really is interesting, though, to re-read the first post I wrote. No management-speak...just a bit of introspection. 

"At this point, I've done quite a bit. I'm up to nearly 32K words, and still have a lot of the story to get to."

Heh.  32K words seemed like "quite a bit" then, certainly.  Now that I'm nearing 100K?  Not so much.

"But this one will be different."

I guess "different" is a good way to describe what I've created here.  It's true that I've kept it going nearly every day for a couple of months now.  That, in itself, is different from the blogging experiences in my past (and from many others, from what I read and hear).  Hopefully, at the same time, it's made for at least a semi-interesting read.  It has for me, but then again, I'm the knucklehead who wrote it.  Of course it's interesting to me.

I created this blog "so that once I'm done I can look back through what I did and why I did it."  But it's morphed into more than that.  As I've plunged through writing the book, I've learned...not just about writing, but also about the overall process, and about the industry, and believe it or not, a fair amount about myself.  This blog has, so far, indirectly tracked along that learning curve, sometimes explicitly discussing what I've learned and why, but sometimes instead just bumping lightly or smacking up wetly against my new discoveries in the world of novel-writing.  

I've had to research some of the posts, and that, in itself, has been a great experience.   I love learning, and the deeper I've dug into the art and science and business of writing, the more I've learned that I have to learn.  It's like I keep peeling off layers of onion to reveal other interesting layers inside...or it would be, if I liked onions.  It's the diced celery in my stew of crushed metaphors. 

No, I don't know what that last bit means either, but it sounds like something Douglas Adams might have written.  That, in and of itself, makes me happy. 

All that said...I must admit that I've truly enjoyed the ride so far, and I hope that you have, too.  This weekend is being set aside mostly for yet another extreme write-a-thon, since I've only been gallumping along at 1K words a night this week and need to make up some ground.  I'm looking forward to it, and I'm also looking forward to being able to write more blog posts about it. 

Have a great Good Friday!