The Word Count Issue

So I’m sitting in Borders, sharing a long table with a preacher of some sort. I only know this because his phone calls, asking people if they can help him out during service, have been rather loud. But other than that, he’s a quiet neighbor. He’s working on a sermon for his church. And since we’re both doing writing of a sort, I find it easy to concentrate on polishing one of two short stories I’m trying to have done for a deadline tomorrow.

Then it occurs to me that he’s gone through several notebook pages in the almost 2 hours I’ve been sitting beside him and he had several already written when I showed up. This man must have written at least 5000 words today while I’m struggling over the final 600 on a 2500 word story.

Now, I don’t know how much of that is waxing the cat. He’s crossed out a lot of stuff and then gone on to re-write and add more. But he IS writing. And doing a much more prolific job of it than I am, I’m ashamed to admit.

It never occurred to me to think of preachers (or priests) as writers until this very moment. But it makes sense. They just have a different audience than we do and their deadlines are much more frequent (at least once a week) than ours. While I don’t envy the finite source material they have to work from, I do envy their ability to sit down and "toss off" so many words in one sitting. Then again, that is their day job.

I can only hope if the day comes where I can write for a living instead of work for it, I’ll be able to sit down and give it the same dedication and effort my neighbor is showing.