Me and the baboons

I am so depressed.

I read a quote from prolific author and novelist James Scott Bell on Goodreads the other day. I think it was supposed to be motivational, but instead, it depressed me.

He said, “If you can write each day, do it, and meet a quota. Minimum 350 words a day. A baboon can do 350 words a day. Don’t be shown up by a baboon.”

Great. I’m being shown up by a baboon.

I don’t write 350 words a day.

Some days, I might write 30 words on my to-do list, but I’m pretty sure that’s not the kind of writing Mr. Bell is talking about.

I can’t help but wonder what kind of writing the baboons are doing, though. I doubt they’re working on suspense novels or intense emotional dramas, although I guess you never know.  It reminds me of the Infinite Monkey Theorem (yep, it has a designated scientific-sounding name! thank you, Wikipedia!) that posits that a monkey, given infinite time, could actually reproduce the works of William Shakespeare by random typing.

So far, it hasn’t happened. Not for lack of trying, though. There was an experiment in 2003 that used virtual monkeys (a computer simulation of a bunch of monkeys typing randomly) that actually did manage to write part of a line from Shakespeare’s Henry IV, Part 2. It took them more than a day, however; apparently it took the equivalent of several billions of monkey years to get that far.

Okay, now I don’t feel so bad about the 350-word daily quota for writers. The monkeys took a bazillion years to eke out less than ten words. I know I can top that.

Another item I read made me feel even better about my low writerly output. According to a CBS news article from May 9, 2003, researchers at Plymouth University in England put a computer into a cage of macaques and instead of typing, the primates picked up stones and “started bashing the hell out of it,” said researcher Mike Phillips. “Another thing they were interested in was in defecating and urinating all over the keyboard.”

Geez. And I thought I got frustrated with writing.

The good news was that the macaques did finally settle down and did, indeed, type five pages of…the letter S, with a few of the letters A, J, L, and M mixed in.

It took them a month.

So there, baboons. I might not be up to your daily speed yet, but I’ve got those macaques beat hands down.

Move over, monkeys, I’m on a roll…