This is a special piece of writing, as it were. Counting around two-hundred and fifty words, it will break the existing record of the number of words I have written in a single year, which was set a couple of years ago. By the end of this year, I will surpass that record by about fifty-thousand words. The new record will exceed a quarter of a million words. Hard to believe, but true. No matter how short my pieces happen to be, I write more and more of them as years go by. But I hope to slow down pretty soon. As soon as I reach three-million words, that is. The way I am going at present, this will happen early next year. This accomplished, I hope to start slowing down. And in earnest. In addition, I hope to write many more haiku of one-hundred and sixty characters including spaces. My sutras, as I like to think of them. By and by, I may slow down to the point of writing no more than, say, twenty-thousand words a year. This was how I started nearly forty years ago, when my magnum opus was still difficult to imagine, let alone shape. Over time, my yearly output would thus look like a brontosaurus—thin at one end; much, much thicker in the middle; and then thin again at the far end. That is my new theory. And it is all mine.

To Monty Python

Addendum (January 8, 2019)

So far, my new theory holds. And it holds very well, indeed. Brontosaurus’ bulging belly is well behind me so many years later. In short, there can be hardly any doubt that my yearly output will end up being thin at both ends, exactly as the theory maintains. Excellent news! But it has just crossed my mind that my theory fails to mention which end is which. That is, where is the head and where is the tail of the fabulous beast? After some thought, I am pretty sure that the tail goes more than forty years back whereas the head is still in the making. I am working on it right now, as a matter of fact. By the time I leave this mortal coil, though, the head will be as good as finished. The eyes will be bright and blinking, the nostrils will be sniffing the air all around, and the tongue will be slipping in and out of the maw with loud slurps. But how can I be so sure of all this? Well, when I started on my writing journey, I made sure not to follow any clues. I let myself go any which way without let or hindrance. Slowly but surely, I reached my goal without ever looking for it. Actually, without even being aware of it until the very last stretch. The only thing that remains to be done at this stage of my life is to round the project off, which is not hard to achieve with all the insight accumulated over so many decades. Alleluia!