Well, here we are, five hundred blog posts later. That number means a lot to me. It’s the minimum word count requirement for each blog post, and that singular rule alone has made me grow and learn more as a writer than the past several years combined.

When I first started this blog, I had, roughly calculated, about 80,000 words written. About enough for a standard length novel, and indeed one novel was about all I had had to my name. In fact, the majority of my words as an author were written during a single month, because I did NaNoWriMo during my sophomore year of high school. Outside that, I really couldn’t claim anything.

I know I’ve given that story before, so instead I’ll shed a different light on it. With the help of numbers, because I like numbers.

571 days ago I started this blog, where I would write 500 words every day in order to become the writer I wanted to be. As you can tell, I’ve missed a few days. These days I only post six times a week, and I’ve taken two breaks that were multiple weeks long. Only one of those skipped days was unplanned, I’m proud to say.

The current writing tally for all of my blog posts is just over 262,000 words long. That’s enough for over 3 typical fantasy novels, and it averages 525 words per post. But here’s the thing. I include fiction-based posts (writing prompts, chapter excerpts, etc) in the blog post tally, but I do not add their word count. Basically, the average is 525 words per post assuming every fiction post is 0 words long, which obviously isn’t the case. (I do it this way because I keep that tally separate for fear of overlap.) So really, I’m doing well. As a side note, only two posts are shorter than 500 words. Those were poems, so I dismissed the rule.

As far as “how many words per day” I’m writing (not per post), the tally is currently 460 words. It’s a little disheartening that I haven’t build enough buffer to cover the days where I don’t write, but this number is still purely non-fiction posts. This means that I’ve actually written well over 500 words per day since February 2016.

Since I’ve started this blog, I’ve done so many things. I’ve read over 50 books. I’ve written over 50 short stories. This blog has birthed Dreamscape, the Lisa Stenton stories, Rise of the Riftguard (which I will definitely come back to some day), and most importantly, it’s given me a new universe: Spear Gate.

If nothing else, the fact that I have a new playground to run around in itself makes the blog worth it. I’m no longer bound by the events and characters of Nacre Then, and while I don’t intend to retire that universe completely, it’s too restrictive for me to have much fun with it these days.

To sum up, I’m proud of how far I’ve come, but I’ve still got a ways to go.

Here’s to another 500.