The Power of Gradual

Apr 27th, 2009 by Carlos

It’s very rare that I get to write a post that applies to both of my interests: money and writing. I’ve managed to get it done before when I wrote about how money legitimizing everything and when I analyzed how much writing pays. But this is another one of those posts where I get to satisfy both my financial readers and my writerly readers (if there are any out there—speak up if you are!).

So I’ve been complaining for a while about how writing for this blog has absorbed all the time that I could be using on writing fiction. I haven’t done much about it, but the other day it hit me that I’ve been blogging for over a year (since October of 2007) and I’ve consistently published around one post per day. So I can do it—I can write every day for long periods of time. Being a writer is within my reach—I even proved it to myself when I participated in NaNoWriMo.

In the early days of this blog I even published three posts in a day, although the quality of those early posts was dubious, at best.

And that’s when it hit me: what if I would’ve dedicated all that time to writing fiction instead of blogging about money? What would I have to show for it? Would I be on the bestseller lists yet?

Shoulda, Coulda, Woulda

It’s easy to look back and say I should’ve done things differently. But I’m pretty happy with the time I’ve put into this site and what I have to show for all the work I’ve done. It has allowed me to practice my writing, it has gotten me into a writing routine, and it even got me my current job. So it’s not like I regret having blogged for all this time.

But I’m still curious what I might have to show if I would’ve been writing stories or a novel.

So I took 10 random blog posts and took a word count—an average post is around 550 words. My old posts were much shorter and my current ones are longer, so this seems like a fair number to pick out.

Since October of 2007 I’ve published 525 posts and around 11 posts for other sites. That’s a total of 536 posts.

536 posts x 550 words = 294,800 words

That is a lot of words. It’s not Infinite Jest length or anything, but it’s a lot. A typical novel has around 100,000 words, so even if I cut this by half I’d still have enough raw material that I could call a novel. I might even have enough for two novels!

That’s pretty amazing. To think I could’ve written a novel+ in under two years is great news. That means I can do it. It means it’s possible. One of my biggest issues when it comes to writing is saying I don’t have enough time, but writing 500 words a day is pretty easy—I’ve proven I can do it. Now I just need to keep doing it with my fiction.

Granted, writing about one concept or idea or theme for that long is tiring and hard—but still. I’m taking the 294,000 words as a major victory.

To the Money Readers

I haven’t forgotten about you guys. You’ve probably already figured out the PF connection here—eliminating debt or saving money works the same way. Focusing on small amounts can work as long as you do it regularly over the long term. Granted, some PF writers like Ramit would have you focus on the big stuff, not the small details. And as much as I agree with Ramit on most stuff, I have to disagree here because, well, it would’ve fit into the context of my post. You start small and then you move up—that’s my take.

Saving a dollar here and there doesn’t feel like a lot of progress, but once you start doing that over long periods of time—that’s when it starts to pay off. Just ask Tricia—she just paid off over $37,000 of credit-card debt. Anything’s possible.

It may not be sexy and it may take a long time, but by focusing on small bits of progress over a long period of time, anything’s possible. Now if you’ll excuse me I have some fiction I have to go write.

Photo by Zevotron