Two important milestones of a million are in the process of being surpassed. Exactly when they are is of no concern to me, but both in their own ways mean quite a lot to me and to my writing.

The first one is the usual cause for celebration – visitors to this website. This website was established either in 2016 or 2017 to very little notice, and the counter was pretty much just added as a fun little case of, “Oh, the website comes with this doohickey? Sure, why not?” I try not to care about raw numbers, especially since I know embarrassingly little about online marketing and my contemporaries have unquestionably outdone me in most matters of numbers. I don’t like to compare people to others, but it is fun to compare me to my past self… especially if Current Me seems to be winning. Even though at time of writing I’m about 20,000 off, hitting the million visitors milestone (and keep in mind this is visitors, each clicked page doesn’t count as a view by the same person)… it feels quite nice to know that a website dedicated wholly to these works is appreciated to that extent.

In my past blogs, I’ve lamented about what could have been, and I was bitter about certain strings of bad luck related to my online writing. But it has to be said, so few writers get the chance I do. To write original works not tied to an existing IP like fanfiction, to release it into the world, and to even be noticed… It’s akin to being struck by lightning. I feel like one in a million for even getting that opportunity. It’s a blessing, and an honor, to write stories, post them to my own website, and have people care about that. You’re all wonderful to me, and I can only hope my stories give you joy in thanks for such care towards me.

Another more interesting milestone is written words. Let’s do a bit of math – Being More Social is, give or take, about 300,000 words. That’s half of the words of War and Peace, in a high school coming-of-age erotica. Brevity is definitely one of my weakest skills as a writer. The Good, The Bad and the Molly, my second longer-form book, gives us another hundred thousand words. Mutual Benefits gives us around 200,000, bringing the total word count to around 600,000. Consequences, even unfinished, paired with Worlds Apart brings us another 200k, and if you added together my short stories’ word counts, as listed on the page, it makes it clear that not only did I exceed a million written words, but extraordinarily, I did so in 2023.

This is a much neater accomplishment, and not just for myself. I know a few of my readers have commented that they don’t like reading most books. When it comes to the classics, I can’t say I blame you – tastes evolve and so do writing styles. I don’t think it’s a sign of the uneducated to say, for example, that Frankenstein is written pretentiously – anyone who’s read it recently will tell you that it absolutely is. (And as a writer whose pacing isn’t always great, I still feel qualified to say, the pacing in Frankenstein is awful. Several pages dedicated to taking a meaningless trip to Oxford, but barely a paragraph dedicated to the creation of the monster? C’mon, Mary. She’s no doubt a talented writer, likely moreso than myself, but it’s also quite clear a teenager wrote the book.) So to anyone who doesn’t like reading books, congratulations if you’ve read every work of mine – you’re read more than a million written words through that alone.

If I keep up a good pace, I can write 1000 words in an hour, but the reality is more akin to around 500, especially when one averages it out. Given this, and that old “if you spend 10,000 hours at something, you’re an expert” rule, it’s comforting to know that mathematically, I’m a fifth of the way to becoming an expert at writing trashy online erotica. I also have been enjoying seeing how this writing evolves over time, and nothing but practice and time can cause that.

It feels weird sometimes to talk about my writing because it’s very me-centric. I suppose that’s what a blog is, but it feels weird nonetheless. That said, I want to emphasize that writing to this scale and in this medium isn’t a one-way street. I never would have written a million words without you all, both in terms of the support and in terms of the way your feedback has helped and ultimately shaped my writing. Ultimately, the books I write are community products and belong to their community, not one person. So thank you for the million, both the views and the words. They’re your victories too, and here’s to the next million of each. I’ll talk to you all next week.