My Darg

So I went looking yesterday for something on the web about Conrad's writing regime, but all I found was a 1971 interview with Graham Greene where he complains that Conrad worked 12 hours a day whereas he can only manage an hour and a half. He also admits to obsessive word counting, making little marks on his day's work at 300, 600 and 900 words and giving up when he tops 1000. Presume he worked on a typewriter or maybe even wrote long hand, either way, that's a lot of time spent counting. Now we have computers to do that for us ... I try to get over the 1000 mark myself and not to think too hard about the quality of those thousand words, many of which are 'and' and 'the' and 'was' and so on. Darg btw is an old convict word, probably originally Scots, it referred to the duties a man or woman had to complete as part of their obligation to the State (usually personified as an individual s/he was bonded to) before they could go off and work for themselves ... or get drunk ... or go for a swim ... or whatever. Which is what, my darg over for today, I'm going to do now.