Two things related to the inspiration section of yesterday’s post:

1) Brian Keene has written a blog post about the 40,000 words he wrote in a day. Turns out it was actually 85,000 in a weekend. He talks about how he did that, why, and what it means here.

2) I had meant to include a fourth writer in my inspiration section of that post, but somehow forgot. Which is ironic because Ken Liu was the writer that first got me thinking about that post, and was the writer who I most wanted to include. I don’t know anything about Ken’s writing process, but I do know I’ve read some of his stuff and he’s quickly becoming one of my favorite short story writers. Luckily for me there is a ton of Ken Liu writing out there to find. As I post this Ken has made 41 sales this year alone. Most of that is original short fiction, some is reprint rights and some is translation rights. Since the beginning of June, 6 of his short stories have been published. On his site he lists 24 publications since January 1st.

The point of me going on about this? People are out there producing at fantastic rates. Any of us could do the same thing, we just have to sit down and do it. Of course, rate and word count is not the be all and end all of writing, but you need to write to be a writer. Also, if you’re an inexperienced writer like me? Writing a lot is the best way to get better.