Leanne Phillips

Here’s something I’ve been thinking about lately, when I feel that I don’t have enough time in my life to write as much as I’d like: The thing is, I do write. I write a lot, each and every day.

In addition to paid writing, I write blog entries and journal entries, I respond to e-mails from friends and posts on community message boards to which I belong. I post messages and respond to messages in a couple of professional groups. Writing today is not the solitary profession it once was, and by networking and sharing information through e-mail loops and groups and writing forums, I’ve learned a great deal, and more rapidly than I would have been able to do if left to my own devices.

But I’m wondering lately how many words I really do write every day. If I added up the words in every e-mail, every post, every blog and journal entry, every letter to a friend, every update on Twitter or MySpace or Facebook, I think I’d have easily written the entire Harry Potter series by now. It’s something to consider.

One of my favorite credos is from The Four Agreements, by don Miguel Ruiz, who writes that, among other things, we should be impeccable with our word. I’ve always taken that to mean to speak truthfully and kindly and fairly. Now, I’m wondering whether being impeccable with our word might also mean to value our words, to use them well, not to fritter them away. At the end of my life, what percentage of the words I’ve written and said will I wish I could take back and redistribute to better use?