Day: May 26, 2016

Reached five hour goal today

Lynn

I find it funny that the moment I stop a challenge, I immediately find it easier to focus on what needs to be done.

I reached my five hour writing goal today, although I admit, I’m nowhere near my word count goal.

Hours Words Session WPH
1 318 318 318
1 618 300 300
1 1161 543 543
1 1382 221 221
1 1847 465 465

Total: 5 hours, 1,847 words, for an average of 369 wph.

On the other hand, even though I haven’t reached my word count goal, I am now officially past the material I needed to fix and I had just started to write some new stuff at the end of my last session.

I’m thinking of writing some more tonight, but we’ll have to see how I feel after a break, because I absolutely want to get to bed early tonight. I feel like I’m at my most creative and productive when I get more sleep and I want to give myself plenty of opportunity for that after several nights of less than optimal bedtimes.

This writer does not subsist on coffee and tea; she needs her sleep! :)

ETA: I did write a bit more, although not as much as I’d hoped to.

0.46667 2220 373 799.286

So new total: 2,220 words, 5.47 hours

But look at that! A major improvement in my pace now that I’m writing new material again! ;D Whew! I’m excited about tomorrow. Finally, some momentum again!

Now, must get some sleep so I feel good tomorrow and can write nice and fast.

And as an aside, my A/C is still broken and it’s starting to get hot around here. :o I’m getting worried that the part I need won’t arrive before it gets really hot. And I hate leaving my windows open: I just found a bug floating in my glass of water. Yuck. I’m too delicate for this crap. ;)

Failed the challenge five out of five days

Lynn

So, I failed the challenge five out of five days. I am stopping that particular challenge, because obviously eight hours of writing in a day is just not going to happen right now. Maybe it’s the fact that it’s the end of the school year and my routine is a mess, or maybe it’s just because I almost never write for more than four to five hours in a day and it’s like exercise, I’ll have to work my way up to it. Either way, that challenge is done.

I’m going to resume jumping between stories, with an eye toward working as much on the book I want to finish ASAP as I can without bogging down in it, and I’m going to enjoy myself.

Every day, my main goal is to get in my 5 hours of writing, and 3,933 words, and take time off writing to publish so I can enjoy that process too.

Well, that all needed saying, and I feel better now.

Multiple stories at once: seventh week & summary to date

Lynn

I thought I’d list this week’s progress and then list out how I’ve been tracking from the beginning and maybe even compare it to this time last year and a few of my more productive 7 week periods from the past just to see if there’s anything there to learn.

Thursday—Wednesday, May 19–May 25

(9)
907
1,201
951
1,511
730
1,299

Total: 6,590 words.

My pace was down significantly this week too, the average coming in around 356 wph.

I worked only on the book I was trying to finish this week. Not even one word for another book.

As I said in another post, this week has been the second week I’ve had to get through that is completely out of my routine because of the end of the school year for my kids. I did better than last week, but not by much.

I don’t honestly know how much of that to blame on the messed up routine and how much to blame on trying to work on only one story. I’ve decided the latter is just not going to work, not even with me knowing I need to get this book I’ve been trying to finish finished. As soon as I started telling myself I needed to work on one book and one book only, my word counts plummeted.

So, I’m backing off the deadline. It was a personal deadline anyway, and it’s not the end of the world. It feels like a big deal, but I’ll just have to let that go in favor of getting more words so I end up with more books, faster.

Now, for the summary.

Week 1: 21,873
Week 2: 10,959
Week 3: 16,927
Week 4: 11,948
Week 5: 11,282
Week 6: 4,296
Week 7: 6,590

Total: 83,875 words

To compare previous 7 week periods:

  • Last year: 7 weeks ended 5/26/15: 40,035 words
  • My highest word count from any 7 week period since I started keeping records ended 3/24/13: 89,587 words
  • The highest I’ve made it during any other 7 week period is in the low 60,000s.

I believe the downward trend in my word counts isn’t something problematic so much as it’s a result of my shifting routine with the end of the school year.

The next couple of weeks should provide evidence of that, or to the contrary if it turns out I’m wrong. Still, I’m convinced this method is exactly what I needed to increase the number of words I write every month and that it has serious long-term potential for me. :)