It was just two days ago I posted that I had found inspiration for a potential new story idea, one that explores an early-fantasy age devastated by war and internal strife. Two days ago when the idea popped into my head, and the seeds for the story started presenting themselves to me.

In those two short days I’ve written over 5,700 words of content for that story arc in my free time.

Recently I was going back through one of my Twitter accounts and found a post where I was blown away that I’d written 10,000 words over the course of a month. Now I look at my statistics plugin and it tells me that I’ve published 101,000 words in five months, with almost another 30,000 scheduled for release. In all of September I posted just shy of 8,000 words – if I were to keep the pace I’ve just set, I could reach that same total, just for one single story arc, in three days. Realizations like that make me feel like NaNoWriMo may actually be doable for me this year, particularly with months to exercise my creative muscles.

A constant thought in the back of my head is “what good is producing all this content if nobody reads it?” and while I try to silence that little voice, it represents a very real fear of mine, one that has been present in most of my endeavors throughout my life, whether large or small – will anyone notice that I’ve done this? I readily admit my self-confidence is fueled by external validation, and so I check this website’s visitor stats far more often than I probably should.

People ask me what I would like to “get out of writing,” and I don’t have a good answer for them. I believe I’ve touched on this topic elsewhere in my blog, but realistically I think I want to get a sense of inspiration, to know or hear that I’ve successfully encouraged others to create artistic endeavors of their own by example. I know some very talented people, across all sorts of disciplines, and often I feel like I don’t have any one particular skill I’m uniquely exceptional at, or even above-average, in the sphere of people I know. This may or may not be true, but the truth is largely immaterial – it’s how I feel.

Maybe I’m hoping that, if some small piece gets picked up by an amateur publishing site, or I get a piece of fan mail, or even just start to see a consistent uptick in the number of people reading my posts, I’ll get that validation that I’m not finding elsewhere in my life right now, that satisfaction that I’m “doing it right,” for whatever “it” is.

Regardless of what doubting demons are going on in my head, I’m honestly proud at what I’ve been able to pen these past two days, and I’m very thankful for those who encourage me to keep writing, keep exploring, and to keep telling stories.