Skydiving as a Writer

By guest blogger Jimmy Hanson

Robert Frola, Wikimedia Commons

Now, normally this would make a person panic. Kind of like sky-diving, that thing where it looks awesome from afar but when you’re actually there looking out the window it suddenly hits you – wham! You’re a thousand feet off the ground and you’re going to fall the whole way back down.

10,000 words.

Then again, honestly, who ever dared to call a writer normal?

I could have easily waved it off as a crazy venture done by other people and left it at that, especially since the date was a Wednesday and I had to work. Regrettably that includes sitting behind a desk answering phones for a hospital for nearly 8 hours straight, which has absolutely nothing to do with what I really want to do (which is write, 24/7!).

I also have a 4-year-old son who needs to be cared for, chores to be done, dishes to be washed, clothes to be folded, dinner to be cooked . . . the list goes on, more and more excuses for why I shouldn’t participate in such a foolhardy venture.

But, still. The intrigue got to me. 10,000 words in one day.

Has a nice ring to it, and since I hadn’t been getting much writing done lately I figured, what could it hurt?

Actually, nothing. I planned my day around it: get up at 4 a.m. (early, even for me) so I’d have two hours of uninterrupted quiet time for writing. Go to work, and write what I could without being caught. Go to lunch, type away like a mad fiend at a nearby café. Return to work, write a bit more; maybe get up to 2,000 words if I was lucky. Go home and persist, persist, persist. Stay up until the stroke of midnight, if I had to.

So what really happened? Woke up at 6:30, ran around like crazy getting everyone ready for daycare and work and zipping out of the house at 7. Arrive at work, promptly forget my goal in the mad-dash to get emails and calls completed. Remember only around 9 that I’d planned to have at least started by then. Start typing at an insane pace to get a decent amount in without being tagged.

Lunch – run an unexpected errand, and then write all speedy-speedy for the remaining 20 minutes. After work, convince husband why it is vital I have an hour to head to the café and work solely on reaching my goals. Thrill at the instant, and unexpected, approval.

Stop at 10 p.m., feeling astonished and amazingly accomplished to have completed 6,723 words.

Wow. The number still resonates within me a few days later. I wrote 6,723 words in one day.

On a random Wednesday, in the midst of life and work, and other.

How many can claim to have at least tried such a venture? The pride of being a part of it – of reading the check-in posts and sharing in the trials and tribulations of myself and others – is something that can never be diminished.

10,000 words in a day. Crazy? Maybe.

But so is sky-diving, and there are people out there doing it anyway, right?

Jimmy Hanson
with her son

JIMMY HANSON is a bipolar creative writer who found her ultimate niche in paranormal romance. Her favorite pastime is taking her son on fantastical adventures, and curling up with her two cats and a delicious book or two.