Day 59 - All for One, and One for All!

There's something really inspiring about writing with other people. I've done several word sprints today, where another writer challenges you to something of a race. You type for half an hour or an hour (or whatever) and then compare word counts. You win some, you lose some, but you always get a lot of writing done.

It helps if you, like me, are competitive by nature. I can't play poker for fake money, I can't play badminton if no-one is keeping score. To strive, to achieve, to excel - all of these things require a form of measurement by which to judge your progress and success. To do something 'just for fun' with no end goal is something completely foreign to my mind, and something I struggle with as more and more of the world seems to be moving that way.

Even NaNoWriMo is a competition. I'm competing against myself, measured in word count.

Image from Sport.yahoo.com

I was thinking that what we need is an Olympic sport of writing. It would be scored similar to diving or gymnastics. You would have a certain time limit, and the amount of words you wrote would constitute your "difficulty", so to speak. It's harder to write an excellent 10,000 word story in an hour than it is a poem. Then the content counts towards the execution scoring phase. There would be a panel of judges, all holding up little placards with scores on them.

NB. This is in no way a cheap way to give myself even a fighting chance of getting in the Olympics. Nope. Really. I promise.

Word count - 3,860