Writers, courses and word count

4 March

Last night I sat and worked just how many words I have written, well, at least I tried to. This blog now stands at 450,000 words; the four novels I have on Amazon, plus the NANO effort from last year bring it up to just short of 900,000 words. But that's not the end of it is it, not by a long way. I have a number of other works that are far from finished.

The new Fred Cooper novel is at around 40,000 words, then there's Happyman at around 50,000 words. I have a folder on my 'puter desktop with 11 or 12 story ideas that I'm hopping will lead to new novels. And don't forget all the note books lying around the place. There's one here by the 'puter, another by my armchair and another by the bed. Both cameras have one as do both cars. There's so much stuff in them that I have no idea how many words there are. The final count therefore is unknown.

In Writing Magazine there's an article a month ago about when is a writer a writer. The basic answer is that a person who writes is a writer. OK, fine. But who does that include? Is a student a writer? What about someone who writes to numerous pen pals across the world and those who now use email to do that same job? What of secretaries in an office? I ask this because I'm sure that I was a writer in the late 1960s and through the 1970s while I was in the Army. There I would write long sprawling letters home to my parents and to a few pen pals I had at that time. I also kept an diary/journal thing for several years and have tried it a few times since then too.

Years ago I began studying a theology diploma run by the Baptist Union. I gained that with few problems. The word counts were around a couple of hundreds to start with but soon they were asking for up to 2,000 words. To start with I was struggling to fill 200 words, by the end I was struggling to keep to the 2,000 word limit. As well as theology I also learned others lesson during it. One in particular was about the 10 Plagues of Egypt where I said that the plagues in and of themselves were not that big an event. My tutor wrote, 'Try putting yourself in the shoes of the Israelite slaves!' OK, point taken, be careful how you word things. I later went to gain a second theological diploma from London Bible College. Several courses at the local college came and went too, all with decent passes.       

Then in 1996 I began studying humanities with the Open University. The assignments for the degree I did ranged for a few hundred words to the longest one at 4,000 words. Now here's the thing, those OU assignments were much more structured and I believe that is where I learned to write properly. So you may be wondering what is the point of all rambling along. Basically it's back to the start and word counts. How can any of us really know how many words we have written? We can't can we. But I do believe that if someone has done so many courses and so on, not necessarily writing course, before they start writing novels, short stories or magazine articles, then they are a writers.

And so to a photo ... 

The harbour at Cushenden, Co; Antrim.

A school funny today ...

TEACHER: Donald, what is the chemical formula for water?
DONALD: H I J K L M N O.
TEACHER: What are you talking about?
DONALD: Yesterday you said it's H to O.