--- date: 2018-01-11 11:41:00 +00:00 link: http://chrisbowler.com/journal/quantity-before-quality attribution: Chris Bowler --- > Before you can write a good book, you have to learn to write a good 500 words. And before you can do that, you need to write 500 words consistently, period. And you have to learn to finish a book before you can focus on writing a good book. Great point by Chris. I spend way too much time tweaking, editing and re-planning already-written longer work that may never be salvageable ([to my taste](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=ira+glass+the+gap "'The Gap'")), rather than trying to create something new based on what I've learned. Project for the year: force myself to write, regularly, in manageable ~500 word chunks, whether those turn out to be completed flash-fiction or just individual scenes or portions of scenes. I'm going to [randomise the contraints](/random/) for each to see if it shakes me out of my rut. I'll try to post those experiments regularly and maybe even add a [shame counter](/now/) to the site to track how badly [I fail at it](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=yoda+failure+teacher+is).