From Edie: Discover how a simple walking routine led to a powerful writing lesson about consistency. In this inspiring reflection, Eva Marie Everson shows how small, steady steps—one mile or six hundred words at a time—can transform both your fitness and your writing life, leading to real progress and finished pages.
Dipping the Quill Deeper: One Mile / Six Hundred Words at a Time
by Eva Marie Everson @EversonAuthor
Several months ago, I met two of my out-of-state cousins who were in town for lunch. For reference, allow me to tell you a couple of things about us:
- We, the three of us, are about the same age.
- They are both stunning.
As it often happens during luncheons or dinners with those we love, someone (not me) said to the server, “Will you take a photo of us, please?”
She said she would. I’m not sure whose phone/camera was used, but we all got a copy of said photo. I took one look at it, frowned, and headed for home. After showing it to my husband, I said, “That’s it! I’m getting these extra pounds off.”
Once upon a time I was the runt kid. Skinny. Knobby knees. I could eat a horse, and you’d never know I’d been such a glutton. Then hormones happened and seems from that moment on, I was counting calories, walking or running, heading to the gym . . . whatever it took. At one point, in my thirties, I walked a thirteen-minute mile in four-mile jaunts and nearly cried if the scales went over 120. I could walk into any store, pick out any outfit and never try it on. Just walked out (after paying of course) and knew it would fit.
But that was thirty years ago. Sigh.
Back to my sad tale of a pitiful photo taken of a trio of cousins…
I had recently purchased a treadmill and decided that it was now time to take this thing seriously. I started at a mile a day, every day. Then two. Then three. (Just for reference, I now walk a 22-minute mile at 2.8 miles per hour.) Because my right knee had begun to bother me, I shifted my routine to walking one mile, three times a day.
(If you’re wondering what this has to do with writing, hold on. . .)
One day, I walked past my husband whose head turned. “You’re getting fit!” He was rewarded with a hug.
As the days and weeks continued, I started to notice that clothes fit loose, slacks were easier to slide into, and such.
Day by day, mile by mile, I was accomplishing my goal.
Now here’s the writing part:
In his book Dancing on the Head of a Pen, Robert Benson encourages readers to set a goal of writing 600 words a day. That’s it. Just 600.
If I said to you, Benson wrote, I was going to write only six hundred words today, you might consider me among the laziest of writers. In my defense I offer this: six hundred words a day, six days a week, for fifteen weeks yields a manuscript of fifty-four thousand words, a book of 170 to 190 pages, depending on how the page has been designed…six hundred words a day for about four months will leave you several months to do the rewrite and to have a book within a year if you work diligently.[i]
There is not a single writer or author I’ve ever met who doesn’t fear the blinking cursor on a blank Page One. Having written a book is dream; writing a book is a nightmare. Absolute dread. Much the same as diet and exercise. Being fit is wonderful; working out and skipping desserts or delicious, tempting seconds is painful.
Just as I didn’t have to walk miles a day to start my new regimen to see success, you don’t have to sit down and write 45,000 or 85,000 words in one day . . . one week . . . or one month. Set a goal—a daily, six-day-a-week goal—and stick to it. You may miss a day (I occasionally do, too), but that doesn’t mean you stop. You can either make it up with an extra mile or an extra 600 words.
What a writer has to do tomorrow amounts to snatching a few hundred words from the wind.[ii]
[i][i] Benson, Robert, Dancing on the Head of a Pen (Colorado Springs, CO: Waterbrook Press, 2014) pgs. 46,47.
[ii] Benson, Dancing, pg. 48.
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