Is There a Branch of Writers' Anonymous?

I think I'm becoming word obsessive. When I checked yesterday my January blog adds up to 13,683 words and my February blog to 9,886 not counting this entry. Add to that the fact that I write over 400 words a day in a personal diary and all the other newspaper, feature writing and web site work I do and I am beginning to seriously worry whether I should be attending meetings of WA - Writers' Anonymous.

Seriously I thoroughly enjoy writing. I would spend my whole life doing it. So what actually constitutes a writer? Most of my writing attracts no payment and is just done out of a love of the art. So am I qualified to call myself a writer? Well I think so and so from now on when somebody asks me what I do I will proudly say "I am a writer."

I often think I would like to know how many words I have written in my lifetime, bearing in mind I was a journalist for many years and so wrote for a living. It runs into millions. My personal diary has been going for almost 40 years and I can write up to 600 words a day in that. Even taking an average of 300 words a day over the years it works out (quick bit of maths here) at somewhere around 4.3 million words.

Which reminds me that I read an article in the Daily Mail on Saturday that the biggest growing sector in publishing is self publishing novels through Amazon. Novels and books that can be downloaded electronically. I am busy at the moment checking through and updating a silly little novel I wrote many years ago based on my experiences as a junior reporter in Lowestoft. It is my intention of placing this on Amazon to see whether anyone is stupid (sorry intelligent) enough to download it. The main problem at the moment is I can't think of a title - absolutely nothing springs to mind.

Last night was the annual Hethersett and District Churches Together barn dance in Little Melton Village Hall. Usually this event is accompanied by frost and snow. This year the date was put back slightly and so the conditions were better. I really dislike most forms of dancing - it's just not my bag, I'm always glad when dances are over. I guess I quite enjoy the barn dance once I make the effort to get there but last night the house was warm, I had a cold and I just felt like hiding away. Then I remembered that Casualty was on television and that was the spur for me to leave the house.

Today looks like being a bright and relatively warm one and so it's off to Carrow Road to see Norwich play Manchester United. Looking forward to the match and I have a sneaky suspicion that Norwich might just turn the formbook upside down here and win this one (remember you heard that here first). I will give you my impressions of the match in tomorrow's blog.