July Blast Final Figures and a Lesson

156,573 Words


144 Items Written
134 Submissions
064 Rejections
018 Hits

Top performer was TomC wirh a solid 32,612 words, more than one story per day average, 30 subs. In July Tom had 4 hits and has reported an August hit with a July Blast story.

I should say that my own performance was abysmal. I usually aim to be Number One in all our challenges and up to now have always managed it. But this time Tom deserves the credit as THE MAN.

The LESSON


You think these figures are good?

They STINK!

Boot Camp is aptly named as a hard-working, highly-motivated place, yet look at the averages for the figures above. In a place where the ethic is WORK-WORK-WORK these were the figures, with about half a dozen not recording ANY writing.

(They may have written and subbed, but if they don't post to say so...)

032,612
018,800
016,767
016,350
014,660
009,917
009,387
009,120
006,788
005,540
004,500
003,500
003,001
002,785
001,571
001,275

Now divide by 31 (the number of days...)

1052
606
541
527
473
320
303
294
219
179
145
113
97
90
51
41

If we are writers we must write and 300 words is a single page of writing. Anything less means we aren't even pretending to be writers.

When I have done surveys at Writing Conferences the average word-count REPORTED (and I strongly suspect it is an inflated figure) is 147 words "per day". These again are relatively motivated people but they write (probably) less than 3,000 words a month.


I think it was Ray Bradbury who said we have to write a million words just to BECOME writers. I'd agree with that.

We have to have daily, weekly, monthly targets and EXCEED them.


Look at Boot Camp's successes, just for 2006. 13 First prizes, 50 Prizes-Places-Finals. What percentage of all the prizes are we taking and yet we have (officially) 27 members (about 2/3 active).

What would we be doing if the 27 WORKED (and I include me in that), what if we had thirty members working HARD, writing 500 words on a bady, 1000-1500 on a good day? Well, for one thing. Just 16 people signed up for the July Blast, 12 did not. One individual paid £30 to join us for the month and then wrote the dizzy total of 1,571 words, 51 per day. If that's a blast, what is coasting? (Of course his lack of productivity was somehow my fault...)

Had we had 32 not 16, and each working hard to match Tom's output (just 1,052 per day) we would have produced a million words, 550 submissions and more than 100 hits.

There is no "magic" in the process. The more we write the better we get, the more we critique, the better we get, the more we sub and get feedback, the better we get, the more subs we make, the more hits we get.


And you need to know one very important thing: quantity does NOT mean lower quality. The buzz, the drive, the extra mile walked often produces from somewhere within, something special.

Sure maybe 20% of the output isn't that good, but the good pieces are often VERY good, and it's all material for future rewrites. Half of my competition winners were written during "Blasts" and many were flashes.

The key is start working harder, more regularly, without excuses. Stop pretending.

In July how many words did YOU write? What did you do to make yourself a better writer? How many competitions did you enter? How many submission did you make?


You have 31 days less to live. You will NEVER get them back.



Alex