The Simple Rule of Addition

I’m not very good at math, but I do know that little things add up. It’s a lesson I am constantly learning; a truth I constantly preach to my children. It applies to money and time, food and exercise, discipline and idleness. It also applies to words on the page (or, rather, on the computer screen.)

I’ve been a bit downcast through February and March. I haven’t made the amount of progress I wanted to on my current novel. But I’ve also written other things—articles for my kids’ school and blog posts being the majority of “other.” But this woeful feeling is why I began keeping a spreadsheet of my daily writing activities a couple of years ago, charting words written and pages edited, books read and writers groups attended. And guess what? I looked back today and realized I haven’t done as badly as I’d imagined! No, I’m not where I want to be on my novel. But I have been writing. Tens of thousands of new words. Hundreds of edited pages for myself and my critique partners.

So little things really do add up. Sometimes I just need to see it in black and white to believe it.