Damian Robb

Deadlines and word counts. These things make me think mostly of horrible, dreaded, university essays or scientific reports (thanks to my sordid past involving a science degree). Blessedly they’re not a part of my everyday life anymore but I’m thinking of changing that. Not the university essays and scientific report part; having finished previously mentioned degree I swore never to return to university, then after finishing a Master’s degree seven years later I swore the same thing again. No, I’m thinking of reintroducing deadlines and word counts into my everyday life, more specifically into my writing.

Being fairly new to this writing game, so far I’ve been enforcing writing on myself in time increments, x amount of hours per day kind of thing. I think so far it’s been a success. I’ve gotten used to writing just about every day, and now when I have “free time” I occasionally use it to do something productive, like more writing, rather than just watching more TV. The only problem with this system is that the amount of work in the set upon time period can vary widely from day to day, and consequently I’m not finishing projects as quickly as I’d like. I think I’m now ready to kick it up to the next level, and, as I’m not currently working a writing job that demands a word count or deadline on my writing, I’ve decided to put it on myself. By applying deadlines and word counts on myself I’m hoping to 1) make better use of the time in which I’ve given myself to write and 2) force myself to write more in the day, even if it’s at twelve o’clock at night in order to reach my word count so that horrible Damian person can let me go to bed. Granted that won’t generate the best writing ever but ultimately I’m under the idea that creating something that needs work is better than not creating anything at all. You need clay to make a sculpture.

The first deadline will be for the short story I’ve mentioned a few times in previous posts, which I’m now about halfway through, and the deadline I’ve decided upon is in two weeks. That’s when the Lady Holly has her mid year break and so gives her plenty of free time to proofread the story, lucky thing. I haven’t landed hard and fast on a daily word count just yet. I do work a full time job, one that for the next two months comes with some added responsibility, so I want the word count I give myself to be realistic and achievable, otherwise I run the risk of becoming demoralised by failing to reach it everyday. It’ll be a bit of trial and error. I think I’ll start with an easy figure, like around 500, as I know I can reach that. Then once that’s habit I can begin to increase it. We’ll see, no doubt I’ll keep you updated on this thrilling experiment.

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The cool thing from the internet I want to share today does indeed come from the internet but was more specifically pointed out to me by Brother Jonathan (twin sibling, not a monk). It’s a video of artist Jim McKenzie creating a sculpture for an exhibition of his entitled ‘Lost Magic’. His sculpture is amazing, and of a style I really like (think the stop motion movie Coraline), but watching him create it is the real exceptional part. Even seeing the process the end result still leaves me thinking ‘How did he do that?’ Well worth a watch.

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Talk soon

Damian