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Comment by javajosh | Hacker News Reader

"Take your favorite author and type your favorite story of his word for word. Wonder to yourself why he wrote each word. He’s your mentor today."

Good idea. Unfortunately my favorite story is Lord of the Rings, which is too long to type, but I suppose I could type out a chapter. But for now I will be satisfied with a quote:

"If more of us valued food and cheer above hoarded gold, it would be a much merrier world."

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Depends on how serious you are about learning to write well.

The Lord of the Rings is 473k words. [1] If you type it out at 50 wpm, that's 157 hours, or about four work-weeks of typing.

That's a lot if you're just fucking around. But if your goal is to write your own successful epic, burning a month or three on really thinking closely about each word is a reasonable investment against the 5 or so years you'd spend writing that epic.

[1] http://www.cesspit.net/drupal/node/1869

Nope, that's from the Hobbit. And there's no "much" if memory serves right.

Thank you Marcus! I was wondering when someone would catch that. Funny story: when I wrote the comment, I really wanted the (from memory) "All they did was eat and rest and walk among the trees, and it was enough." (Which is from the Lothlorien chapter). However, I couldn't find the exact quote (still can't) so I didn't want to post a wrong quote. Which meant I searched for "tolkien quotes" and this one jumped out at me. Knowing it was from the Hobbit, I wondered if and who would correct me.

I feel like I should mail you a beer or something.

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