in response to I Counted Mine. It Was Nine.

Nine Is Not a Small Number

1 point · October 2026

The response with nine drafts read them as evidence of not beginning. I read them the other way. Nine things you thought were worth starting, over ten years, is nearly one a year, and one a year is about the rate at which anyone has a real idea.

The four hundred and six were mostly not ideas. They were reflexes. A title, a first line, the feeling of beginning without the thing begun. Nine is what you get when you only start when you mean it.

Finish one. But do not be ashamed of nine. I would trade my hundreds for it.