Learning Dvorak can save your writing

In 2011, I participated in Milwordy, a challenge to write 1,000,000 words in a year. For those of you who know NaNoWriMo, that’s about one and a half times the NaNo amount, every month, for twelve months in a row — so nothing to sneeze at. I had just come out of NaNo 2010 and was so caught up in the rush of writing that I desperately wanted to continue.

I came out of that year with six overly wordy first drafts for novels, several short stories, some journaling, and lots of bits and pieces that never amounted to much. But what a fantastic year I had! I was writing like in a trance, in one big rush, and it was brilliant.

I recently found my writing diary from that year and remembered the big crisis I had in the middle of it. Writing a million words in a year means an average of 2,700+ words a day, every day. Inspiration wasn’t the problem. I had story ideas, I had lots of free time, I loved it. I threw myself in head first and wrote, wrote, wrote. Didn’t talk about anything else but writing, either. I was probably annoying.