The Man Who Wrote A Page A Day

 Today is the beginning of a new year. The day that many decide to make resolutions. The day that many decide to try new things or stop old things. I have been one of these - in each category - for many, many years. I don't know how many times I was successful, but I do know that I failed more often than I won.

I was thinking over the last few days about what I accomplished during the self-imposed isolation caused by COVID. I am still trying to come up with a few other than I got more reading done (52 books this year). But if you look at sheer numbers. I am down from 2019 (65). Fewer, but many were longer and more difficult to read. And I tried to write a novel. Which brings me to the title of my post today.

Jim McCahery was a friend who taught foreign languages at Xavier where I worked. He was also a published author. The one pictured above is actually his second of a series. I loaned the first one to another teacher and it was never returned. The series is about a retired woman who was a radio star in the '30s and '40s and is now a gardener of flowers. And she solves crimes.

But the purpose of this post is not to tell you about the book or series, but to tell you a little about what Jim taught me about writing. Jim and I would often find ourselves in the faculty lounge at the same time. I guess we had similar free periods. I don't know how the subject first came up, but I mentioned to Jim that I had always wanted to write a novel.

Jim had many things that he passed on to me, but I have forgotten most of them. That's primarily because I never had the discipline to consistently practice them. But the one thing I do remember was his method of producing a page of written story each day.

Jim would come home from school each day at about 3:30 pm. If it was light enough outside he would do some gardening first. Otherwise, it would wait until the weekend. When he sat down to write his goal for the day was first to edit the previous day's page of output. Then he would put it aside. Next, he would write that day's page but without any real editing. He found he could do this in less than three hours. That was his schedule.

I tried it, but my schedule couldn't accept it. First, I didn't get home until after 7:00 pm in the evenings. I had a wife and two small children (Jim lived with a partner, but had no children). I had my running that I was addicted to as well, and that had to be fitted into my schedule. So it never worked. Truthfully, I probably never let it work for me.

Jim died before he could finish his third book. After that, I lost any built-in incentive to keep writing. This was in the mid-1990s. I've tried to start writing again several times, but all have been failures. During the COVID shut-down, I have done some outlining for a book. If I had conscientiously been writing, I could have had over 300 pages done by now.

So I am going to give it a try. Starting today. Each day. I will write periodic reports, truthful reports, here in the blog to keep myself motivated.

Wish me luck!