A step forward towards writing my novel

I bought a book on the weekend, called The Idiots Guide to Writing a Novel. Actually I charged it to the gift certificate my sister gave me for Christmas. Therefore, the book is technically a Christmas present from my sister. Thanks, sis.

I wrote in my first post in this blog, The Written Word, that one of my life goals is to write a book. Picking up this book is the first tangible step towards my goal.

The book suggests a writing exercise - to write three pages a day every day. My first reaction was "Whew - that sounds like a lot". I did an eyeball check of a paperback novel I'm currently reading, and estimated that there were about 350 words on my sample page. Three pages would then be about a thousand words. Every day. Yikes! That still sounds like a lot!

I bet if I take baby steps, I could do it though. My first baby step would be to write 350 words a day for 5 days a week for about two to four weeks. I'm already writing a fraction of that through my journalling and my blogging. This step would only require that I notch that up a little. That, and keep track of my daily word count.

By the way, the preceding paragraphs total up to 212 words.