💾 Archived View for josias.dev › gemlog › words.gmi captured on 2023-01-29 at 02:40:53. Gemini links have been rewritten to link to archived content
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I've been revamping my writing workflow, and took advantage of the opportunity to count the number of words I write daily.
These word counts are rounded daily averages of writing over the last month (since August 1st).
I keep a regular journal on my computer and on paper. Over the last month, I wrote an average of about 556 words per day. 593 per day over the last week. I write about anything that's on my mind, so occasionally this stretches to 1000 or 1500, and sometimes I only write 200 words.
Just Write, the philosophy behind my journaling
I've recently started freewriting again. I take a prompt and write just over 1000 words based on that prompt. There is no pressure for it to be any good. It's simply a way to free fantastical ideas from the mind. I try to do this daily.
I started this a few days ago, so last month's average calculates to 105 words. I estimate this will increase to an average of 600-700 words per day by next month. This is an extrapolation based on my freewriting frequency over the last few days (3 out of 5).
My daily average for gemlogging over the last month has been 76 words. I don't publish most of my thoughts, as I don't have much to say that someone else can't say better, but it's more than nothing.
I haven't written much poetry lately, and when I do write it, it's short. Over the last month I've written 3.5 words per day on average on various poems.
This runs into a similar problem as ew0k's computer counting exercise: what words do I want to count? I also communicate via text messages and email. I wrote 1000 words just yesterday to a single friend. I'd prefer to not to count it, because texting seems to be a form of interpersonal communication that just happens to be written. But in the end, so is all writing, even if the recipient is a future self.
It's been fun counting my words. Now it's time to learn to use them.
~ Josias, 2022-08-30