500 Words A Day: The Graham Greene Challenge

If you’re anything like me, sometimes you find it helpful to know what other writers are doing to get words on the page. If you’re a little more like me, this curiosity has become more of an obsession. Maybe I’m just hitting an experimental phase in my writing journey. In any case, I hope it’s an experiment that others can benefit from as well.

Recently, I read that Graham Greene, author of “The End of an Affair”, tried to restrict his writing to only 500 words a day, a little less than two pages. Not even two pages a day? The task seemed…well, like a piece of cake. However, like anything too good to be true, there was a catch. Greene stopped at exactly 500 words. That means even if you were in the middle of a sentence you would have to stop, you couldn’t exceed, not even by one extra word. I wanted to give it a whirl nonetheless.

I attempted this with some novel material I’ve been working on. I was picking up mid-scene and was going to have to be uber-conscious of my word count. However, I ran into a problem right off the bat. The writing started off slow and my muse didn’t seem to want to play along. This experiment wasn’t going to work if I couldn’t even get to the 500 words. I took a break with total word count of 93 and started to read, a nifty technique I like to use to invigorate my creativity. Half an hour later and I was ready to go.

My second attempt was much more successful. I fell into my stride and was going strong when I noticed that my word count had reached 489. Eleven more words. That’s all I had left and I was on a roll. I silently cursed myself for choosing this lousy experiment in the first place before begrudgingly continuing with the task at hand. My last sentence looked like this:

The wash basin shattered upon impact, sending tiny shards of porcelain

I could have gone on. The thought was on the tip of my brain ready to tumble to my fingers and onto the page. I played fair though and stopped. I walked away and tried desperately not to forget what came next. As it turns out, I don’t think I could have forgotten it if I had tried because all I could think about was what came next and even what came after that. Mr. Greene was definitely on to something.

The following day, I found myself eager to return to the writing and the 500 words seemed like nothing. I used Graham Greene’s technique for a whole week and found it to be amazingly beneficial. Forcing yourself to stop before you feel you’re finished keeps you thinking about the story and when you’re thinking about your story, you can’t help but to keep pushing it forward even if it is only in your mind. Not only that, but I found myself scrutinizing more over word choice. What would be the best fit for that sentence? Is that really what I want to say?

I enjoyed this exercise because it forced me to slow down and really see my story, something I think is key to a good narrative. Also, 500 words really isn’t asking a lot, is it?

Image courtesy of John Ochwat