Earlier this week I was wondering how many words I have written since I began my blog (7 March 2005), so I sat down and started counting…
Actually, that is not strictly true. My blog is powered by Blosxom, which stores all the individual entries in plain text files. Using the power of the Linux command line, I was able to join all of them together and then run them through the standard word counting utility program (cat [path to files] | wc -w) so it was the work of a couple of seconds rather than tedious hours poring over every entry by hand.
The answer, not including this post, was a grand total of 111,373 words. The entries contain some HTML and many have standard footers with tags and links to comments, so the number of readable words may be a little lower but that is still a respectable amount in less than two years. Had I compressed it into two months, I could have completed the National Novel Writing Month challenge (write a novella of at least 50,000 words in one month) twice over.
Of course, the plot may have left something to be desired but, for this morning, I am content to sit back and gaze in wonder at my fingers. Somehow they have not been worn down to short stumps with all that blogging, as well as the volumes I have poured out on forums, emails and web-scripting, as well as bass playing and other digited activity!
Amazing things, fingers, don’t you think?
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