It’s 323am on Friday, 9th November 2018 and I’m writing word vomit number 0750. When I’m done with this, I would have completed 75% of my word vomit project that I started in December 2012. I would be three-quarters done. There’s 250,000 words to go. That still seems like a lot. But soon it’ll be 80% done, then 90% done, then 95%, and we’ll be finished. This entire project has been an exercise in taking on a completely arbitrary undertaking. Nobody’s paying me to do it. When I started, I told myself that I wanted to do it even if nobody else cared. It was something that I was doing for me. A quick glance at my Twitter shows that I have 143 followers on my @1000wordvomits account \u2013 which is about 100 people more than I ever expected to be interested in this. And yet, it’s not like a massive number that’s going to guarantee me book sales or something. The primary utility of accomplishing this project is truly my own personal satisfaction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
When I started the project, I began with the assumption that I would become a better writer by the end of it. I think I already am. I think I’m a noticeably better writer every 200,000 words or so. So I think it’s fair to say that I’m going to be a discernably better writer between this vomit and the last one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
It’s crazy to think that this project is so large, that I could effectively think of the remainder of it as “I’m starting a new project to write 250,000 words” and it would still be a pretty considerable undertaking. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Before I started writing this particular vomit, I poured myself a glass of Bailey’s as a treat. In practice, it’s probably a little more appropriate to celebrate after<\/em> you’ve completed the thing that you set out to do. But hey, this whole thing is arbitrary. I can do what I like. The question is one of genuine self-respect. Do I respect and admire myself for being about to complete 750,000 words? <\/p>\n\n\n\n Technically, because practically every word vomit exceeds 1000 words, it’s quite likely that I’ve already completed 750,000 words, and will probably complete 1,000,000 words around word vomit 990 or so. But that’s not the point. The point is that I imagined a large project for myself to execute on, and I’ve been working on it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n What will be the final measure of utility or value? I already have gotten the value that I had intended to get out of it. More than I intended, I think. And yet there’s still a whole 250 vomits to go. There’s still this entire opportunity to do something new, do something fresh, do something exciting and cool. I’ve conceptualized a few books that I want to write. I want to write a book called Introspect, about figuring out for yourself what you want \u2013 and I’ve already done a few vomits that are a part of that project. I want to write a book of essays called Naughty Boy, and I already have a bunch of material to build off of. I wrote a few vomits based on prompts that I solicited from Twitter, and that was good fun \u2013 it’s always more exciting to write when you know there’s someone who wants to read it. And yet\u2026 more than a few people give me prompts that aren’t entirely interesting to me. They’re interesting prompts in the abstract, but it’s not what I want to be working on. My sprawling notes still call out to me. “Visa,” they say. “When are you going to process us and turn us into essays?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n What are essays, even? Are they still relevant anymore? Should I just tweet everything? Twitter IS somewhat ephemeral. If I were starting from scratch today, and I didn’t have this word vomit project on my mind, I would probably just tweet super aggressively and then turn some of those tweets into blogposts. Maybe. My main blog itself looks like a bit of a mess right now. I would like it if, in the process of writing the next 250 vomits, I simultaneously sort and organize everything else that I have going on in my life. That’s the dream. I don’t want to just\u2026 write 250 vomits in isolation, in a sort of abstract way, and then feel like it’s not part of anything greater, not coherent. My main mode of writing this past year has been on Twitter. I think I’d like to switch gears slightly, and say spend half my time on twitter and half my time writing vomits. I want to finish this project quickly, but I don’t want to compromise too much on quality. I want to make sure that these vomits are things that I’m proud to have written, things that I’m likely to reference and rework and revisit. I was thinking about what I’ve learned from twitter, and it’s really that: that you should reference your past work in your present work, you should build off of what you have, remix and revisit and rework.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I’m glancing at the body of text above with sleepy, tired eyes and wondering to myself\u2026 have I really gotten any better as a writer? I think to really figure that out, I’m going to have to review my earlier work. And so I’m definitely going to spend a bunch of vomits \u2013 maybe about 50, but really even 100 is reasonable \u2013 reviewing old vomits, compressing them, so that I don’t need to keep looking at all 1000 vomits in order to extract the value of out them. I basically need to take meta-notes on my notes, so that I can move faster.<\/p>\n\n\n\n I want to move faster. I want to move lighter. I want to blaze through the next 250 vomits with a searing confidence and conviction. I believe I have it in me. I’ve done smaller versions of this before. I need to sleep well, work out, get into a good, clear headspace, start reading my old vomits, and then just start blazing through this stuff. It’s time to go head-down and full-throttle.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" It’s 323am on Friday, 9th November 2018 and I’m writing word vomit number 0750. When I’m done with this, I would have completed 75% of my word vomit project that I started in December 2012. I would be three-quarters done. There’s 250,000 words to go. That still seems like a… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_exactmetrics_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[520,331],"class_list":["post-10950","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-word-vomit","tag-project-management","tag-status-update"],"yoast_head":"\n