180,000.
That’s about how many words I’ve written in this column since it debuted five years ago this week. I never would have dreamed that the Hungry Hoosier would get picked up by other newspapers and a writing “career” would come my way. Add to that newspaper word-count number what I’ve written for magazines, the book I co-authored in 2008, and the writing I have done for radio and continue to do for television; and the number is close to half a million. Wow, that’s a lot of words!
Most of the world doesn’t live and die by word count, so I will put that in perspective. Half a million words is about the same number of words you will find in Leo Tolstoy’s War and Peace and twice as many words as Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix, the longest of J.K. Rowling’s novels about the adolescent wizard. As I said, lots of words.
I’ve covered a good deal of territory in 500,000 words. I’ve shared about 200 recipes, done over 100 restaurant reviews, and told the stories of countless farmers, restaurateurs, and others for whom food plays an important role in their lives. The overwhelming majority of these individuals have been very grateful to have their stories written, and it’s a bit surreal to walk into their establishments and see my column or article framed and displayed for all to see.
A couple times, however, I’ve gotten some detail of their story wrong, and I’ve felt that agonizing pain nearly every writer experiences when they get errors pointed out in a phone call, letter or e-mail. All you can do is apologize and vow to yourself that you’ll take better notes next time.
I’ve been fortunate to get some recognition for my writing from peers and others. I would like to say that awards don’t matter, but they do, at least to me. Like many others, I suffer from insecurity and self-doubt, and wonder from time to time if what I do is really any good at all. An award, every now and again, can be a nice, albeit temporary, confidence booster.
A lot of the 500,000 words I’ve written over the last half decade have been about other people but I’ve also written, especially in this column, a good deal about my own life. I spent some time this week thumbing through my past columns and I was able to trace what was going on in the lives of the Hutchesons from week to week. Writing can be good therapy and as I read through old columns I can vividly remember what our family was dealing with at the time. Translating thoughts and feelings to the written word helped me process death, illness, and the other curveballs life pitched to us. You may not have known it at the time, but you were serving as my therapist.
Over the years I’ve discovered that the more personal a piece of writing is, the more it seems to connect with readers. I’ve never once had a stranger come up to me to comment on a restaurant review I’ve written; but I often meet readers who tell me that they really enjoyed something I’ve penned about my children or some neurotic thought that’s been rolling around in my head.
Over the next five years my children will enter their teen and preteen years, my wife and I will celebrate a quarter century of marriage. With parents in their late 70s and late 80s, there will likely be changes that occur there as well. I’ll be 50 five years from now and that will certainly be accompanied by new experiences and perspectives. I hope to still be writing, with a million words or more under my belt by then and I hope that you’ll still be reading. Thanks for five great years.
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Easter and spring are here
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