Tag: Progress posts

Posts that track my progress toward my goals.

May 1–16 progress

I wanted to do an update here at the middle of the month because I’m transitioning from writing one book to another and that is usually where I fall behind in a month. I’m trying hard not to let that happen this time, so I’m not allowing myself days off my miracle rule right now.

Eventually, if that rule keeps working for me, I’m going to do a whole post about nothing but the rule and why it’s working so well to keep me writing.

May 1–16: 31,628 words.

That’s an average of 1,976 words a day.

I’m finally getting close to my 2,000 words a day average I’ve been aiming for since I decided that’s what it would take to make me feel prolific.

I’m not going to take for granted that I’ve had some awesome breakthrough, because it’s unlikely, but I am going to try to take advantage of my momentum and keep writing! It really is the only way to keep things going in the direction I want. :-)

April 2019 progress

I posted a few times in April about my progress, once for April 1–7, and again for April 8–20. I was right in those posts, April turned into a great writing month for me. :)

Words written in April: 50,137.

It could have been a nano month. It wasn’t. I never even got off the ground with my camp nano project, because I’m still writing the book I was writing in November, December, January, February, and March. Ah well.

I’m trying to make May my best month yet, which means I’ll need to beat April 2016’s 57,249 words. I might be able to do it, if I don’t lose too much time to publishing tasks. That could happen, because once I finish my current book (which has gone ridiculously long, as usual) I will be publishing it at some point and I’ll have a lot of non-writing things to do, which is what usually gets me out of the habit of daily writing and messes with my ability to focus.

This is the month I refuse to let that happen. I’m just not going to allow it.

I’m really enjoying my routine right now and the way I feel and how the writing is going, and so I’m going to make it work. Whatever was wrong with me the first of last year and the end of the year before (ish) is better and I’m really in a place where the writing is good.

I also really want to write my next book. Ideas are brimming over and the drive to write and finish books feels a lot like it did back in the early days of this indie publishing journey of mine. :)

I don’t know if I’ve mentioned it, but I’ve also discovered that the better my writing month is going, the more likely it is that I won’t do much, if any, journal writing (or blog posting). I’ll deal.

So on to May. Here’s to making it a good one. :-)

April 8–20 progress

I am definitely on to something with the “no sweets before 1,000 words” thing. April has been a great writing month so far and I’m putting the credit for that entirely on that little rule I’ve been following.

Yeah, I’ve had one or two days overall where I’ve not reached 1,000 words and gone to bed without any sweets at all, but that’s it. And yeah, it sounds like a phenomenally bad idea to give myself sweet treats for writing, considering how bad too much sugar is for a body, but I would have eaten the sweets anyway, and more of them, frankly, because I have a serious sweet tooth. This little rule has tamed it quite a lot.

It’s amazing what I’ll push myself through to get a cup of cocoa. :-)

April 8–20: 22,103 words.

April-to-date: 33,792 words.

Unfortunately, my current book has gone long. I’d have been done with it 18,000 words ago if it hadn’t. Now I’m just pushing to get it finished so I can start in earnest on the other book that’s desperate to get out of me. :-)

One thing I’ve noticed lately is that I really don’t like to blog or journal when the writing is going really well. I don’t know if it’s because I’m so ready to get started with the actual writing of the story that I don’t want to waste time doing this other writing, or if it’s that the journal and blog writing actually steal some of my motivation to write. Don’t know. Don’t actually care. I’m just glad to be writing my fiction regularly again.

On that note, I’m going to get back to the writing.

April 1–7 progress

The first week of April has gone really well for my writing. And my writing is going really well too. I feel like I’m on to something with the no sweets before 1,000 words thing. It’s working for me right now amazingly well. I’m surprised I haven’t tried something like this before.

Maybe I have, but it just wasn’t the time. Or I didn’t put it together quite right.

1,000 words isn’t my ultimate daily goal. That’s still 2,000 words. But it is the minimum I’d like to see myself doing every day that I haven’t planned as an actual rest day (or a true sick day).

For the moment, all I can do is keep doing what I’m doing for as long as it works. I’ve said before, many times, that I’m really at a place where I want to start finishing more of my books faster, because I’m terrified I’m going to run out of time to get them written, then I’m going to die with all these stories untold. The funny thing is, I don’t even have actual ideas for a great many of these stories, I just know they’re there, in my head and my heart, waiting to come to me. My series need me to continue them. They’re not done, and the characters aren’t ready for it to be over either.

So there you go. My motivation to get better, to learn to write faster, to keep going even when it’s hard. If I sound a little crazy, I promise you it’s just the fiction talking. :-)

April 1–7: 11,689 words.

March 2019 progress

Words written in March: 15,742.

Almost dead on ten times the number of words written in February, so that’s a win.

I’m no longer following the schedule, except in the most casual way. Five days ago I started following a new rule: no sweets until after I write 1,000 words.

Since then I’ve had five 1,000+ word days in a row. I do love my sweets. :)

This little routine has also helped me cut down my sweets, because I’m not exactly speedy when it comes to my words. I’ve eaten a lot fewer sweets because of that lack of speed. Nothing’s changed in how I write, and I have ended up working at it till the end of the day several times. But I’ve gotten started early every day and I’ve been doing a lot better with this routine than any of the others I’ve tried.

As I said before, I do love my sweets. :D

Might turn out to be the best option I’ve ever tried to get myself to work diligently earlier in the day.

I’m still aiming for 2,000 words a day (consistently), but right now, I’ll take the 1,000.

I’m not using timers except when I am. I guess I should say I’m not using timers to get me started or to keep me writing. I’m just using them occasionally because I sit down and I think I’d really like to use a timer right now. Hell if I know why I feel that need sometimes, but I do, and I let myself do it. Half the time, I turn the timer off before it’s even done. I don’t know why I do that either.

So, final verdict? March was better, despite struggling with a kidney stone and nearly poking my eye out. :)

Let’s see what April brings.

February 2019 progress

Words written in February: 1,573.

Ugh.

I don’t even want to talk about it. Okay, maybe I know what the problem was, and I’m working on correcting it.

I’ve also started trying to follow a schedule for getting my writing time in every day. I’m… not really succeeding at that. Yet. I have a lot of hope I’ll get there.

On that note, I want to wrap this up quickly because I’m really supposed to be writing fiction right now instead of messing around on the blog here, catching up all my missed progress posts.

The last three days of the month were actually really productive, even though my word count didn’t rise by much.

March will be better.

December 1–12 progress

I sat down tonight to write something after another day of not writing anything. I haven’t so far. Instead, here I am writing this, after spending about forty minutes looking at reports, messing with Gmail (I had forgotten you can still access Gmail through the basic HTML link for slow connections, so that was entertaining) and my calendar, and a few other trivialities. Not my best decision, by far. That forty minutes was supposed to be spent writing something for my book.

As a reminder, I pulled up my June 1–15 progress post.

The fact is, I need to start finishing books again. I’ve had way too much time off on the whole over the last couple of years and it’s time for me to start pushing myself again to do more.

I’m worried that I’m falling into the same patterns I seem to fall into after every book I finish lately, where I don’t write, and I start feeling more and more disconnected from the desire to write.

That June progress post is relevant in other ways too, because just this week one of my kids returned from college for the winter break and my routines have been completely upended. The quiet, distraction free environment I seem to need to be able to write is gone. It’ll be three more weeks of in-house disarray before things go back to what passes for normal for me these days.

I’ve written only 1,009 words from December 1 to December 12.

I’d like to take that time off and just say forget it until after the new year but I can’t. I know what will happen, because I saw it happen last year after I released a book. I didn’t write more than a few hundred words for five months. I know it might not happen again, but I don’t want to risk that, and besides, I want new routines. I want to spend my time writing another book. I want to go from one book to the next and not get caught up in this morass of feelings I’m feeling about the struggle to write.

No more struggle.

It’s not real. It’s not worthy of the angst it causes me.

But right now, unfortunately, I’m tired after a couple of really bad nights of sleep, this morning’s interrupted by an earthquake of all things and I’m going to bed instead of write something for my book. That 1,009 words won’t change because of anything I did tonight.

(Yes, a real earthquake. Doors jiggled and stuff rattled downstairs but I didn’t hear much up in my room, just a kind of whoosh after a hard shake. I pulled up the USGS Earthquakes website and just as I did, the earthquake showed up on the list of latest earthquakes.)

I’m falling asleep here, so goodnight.

 

November 2018 progress

Despite my apparent failure when it came to NANO this year, November was actually a really solid month of writing. I did better than October. To find a better month when it comes to sheer word count, I have to go all the way back to October 2016.

So yeah, I’m pretty happy with November.

Words written in November: 31,928.

Most of those words were written the first half of the month. It was a strange month, for sure. But I finished a book in November too, so that’s good. It was my first of the year, so I’m especially happy about that.

And another bright note is that even as I finished that first book of 2018, I was getting deep into a second. That second book reached 21,886 words in November.

And! This was the month I finally broke through to a 6,000 word day. I’ve been after that goal for a while and it was nice to finally reach it.

I’m not going to link to the other November progress posts since they’re the NANO posts, but here’s a link to that tag: NANO 2018. (Tags get reordered here a little too often so it’s possible this link will be defunct at some future date, so I’m saying sorry in advance. I love the idea of linking to tags but practically speaking, the links all break the moment I start futzing around with the tags.)

October 2018 progress

October was a nice month for my writing. It probably could have been better, but I started feeling bad and even reached a point when I wrote a note to myself in my word count spreadsheet that said simply, “Gave up on daily writing. It sucks.”

I did, in fact, give up on my daily writing streak.

But it was still my best month since September 2017.

Words written in October: 20,602.

Despite the end of the daily writing streak and a nice little streak of zero words days that came about when I started feeling bad (not quite sick but definitely under the weather) I feel like my recovery from whatever was interfering with my writing is almost complete.

September 2018 progress

September was an interesting month. I needed to write a lot of words and I didn’t, really, but I still did reach my goal of September becoming my best month of writing I’d had all year. November 2017 is the last time I had a better word count.

I feel like I’m still recovering, but I’m definitely making progress. I still haven’t finished my first book of the year, but I’m getting close. So close, in fact, that I’m making a push to finish it today. We’ll see how it goes. :)

Written in September: 13,358 words.

It’s October now, and I’m just under two thousand words shy of beating September’s word count. With a little hard work, I’ll surpass that number today.

Oh, and today is the 38th day in my streak of writing every day which started on September 4th. That’s good too.

The new plan for 2,400 words a day

I don’t think I went into this in my last post, but I have recently made a small change to my 2,000 words a day plan.

I’m aiming for 2,400 words a day instead.

Not because I want to actually average 2,400 words a day, because that has not changed. A 2,000 words a day average is still my overarching goal. But writing 2,400 a day means I won’t have to think so much about getting ahead or playing catch up if I miss a day here and there. That’s the big reason for this and I think it will work well in the long-term.

Even though I have yet to have one 2,400 word day since I started my plan.

I haven’t had a 2,000 word day either since my last on 8/20, so yeah. :D

But I have a plan!

It almost worked yesterday, too, but in the end, I let too much come between me and the writing.

Plus, the writing is actually not going great because I had to go back to chapter nine and do something I hate doing (restart a scene that’s already part of the book), because I wrote the chapter in the wrong view point. I recognized it when I just kept going back to the start of that chapter trying to figure out why I had no interest in that scene and why I couldn’t seem to move forward and why it felt so flat. I tried a couple of different openings for the scene, and in one, it just came out in another character’s view point, and I just knew then that I had solved the problem. :D

Sometimes these things are just hard to see because we’re so tied to what’s already there.

Today, I hope my plan will get me to the 2,400 words I want.

15 minute sessions, in blocks of 4. Same set up as I mentioned in the timed sessions are back post.

It worked well yesterday to keep me writing and focused, and I’m excited to use it again today.

2,400 words at a 400 WPH (words per hour) pace is 6 hours of timed writing. That’s a lot, but that’s at the slow end of the scale.

At a more peppy 600 WPH pace, these 2,400 words will take me 4 hours of timed writing. Doable, and not an insane work load, by far, even knowing I take 1.5 to 2 hours just to get 1 hour of writing done.

If things are going really well, and it does happen, at a speedy 800 WPH pace, 2,400 words take only 3 hours. I will be pushing for this as often as I can, to give me more time for reading/studying/learning/cover design practice and publishing stuff. :D

We’ll see how this plays out during my writing sessions today, but I am hopeful.

I really need a breakthrough with this thing, because I’m serious about making this 2,400 words a day work. I have so many books to write and I want them all written yesterday! This is the next best realistic option for me.

August 2018 progress

I realized I never did my August summary post so here it is.

Things are still better than they were, even if my August word count is lower than my June word count (11,281). It did come in better than my July word count (6,478), so I’m pleased about that.

Words written in August: 7,840.

I’d like to make September my best yet of the year, but we’ll have to see how things go.

 

Who knows what day of book 19

I wrote 723 words yesterday.

I haven’t given up on my 2,000 words a day plan, but progress doesn’t always happen in leaps and bounds, obviously. :)

I don’t know that I even care how many days I’ve been working on my current book. I know I wrote previously that it could be nice information to have and might help me stay on track, but now I’m not so sure at all. Seeing 104 or 110 doesn’t feel like much of anything: I have trouble seeing at a glance just what it means. 104 and 110 and even 200 feel like small numbers to me, so things feel like they’re going well. Yet tell me it’s been more than three months and wow, that feels like a very long time.

What I’ve concluded is that this measure is just not going to be useful to me and I’ve decided to abandon the effort.

So that didn’t last long, but hey, we have to try new things sometimes and then recognize when they’re not going to work. This one sounded book on paper but didn’t translate well to real life.

Right now, I want to keep my eye on the prize and push for that 2,000 words a day goal without all these other distractions.

Book 19, day 100

Today is day 100 for this book.

I detailed out how I came up with that number in my last post about the writing of my current book. It’s a new way for me to keep track of some generally helpful metrics that isn’t about tracking time or worrying about how fast I write.

Knowing how many days I’ve spent on a book is pretty darn awesome information to have and it’ll be right where I can see it every day because I’ll also be using this post title format in OneNote and my journals. I really won’t be able to hide from reality any longer.

I think that’s a good thing. Ask me in a month. :D

Back to the topic at hand though. I’ve let the day get completely away from me, and now it’s late. Probably too late to be trying to get to 500 words before I fall asleep at my computer, but I think I can do it, so I’m going to try anyway. Why give up before I have to?

So here goes. I’ll be back whenever I need a concentration break so I can refocus. Or tomorrow if I fall asleep at the computer—or just don’t have the energy after writing 468 words in the shortest amount of time possible. (I have 32 words already, because I did actually try to work on my book today.)

I fail a lot

I fail a lot. I think the overwhelming number of posts I’ve put on this site where I candidly admit that I haven’t reached some goal I’ve set for the day tells that story well.

Night before last, I failed again. I didn’t write 500 words or 2,000 words, and I didn’t end up staying awake for a night of writing.

Yesterday, I didn’t do any writing at all. I’m not sure why, because I intended to write, but it didn’t happen.

But here’s how I see failure: it’s a chance for a fresh start.

Today, that’s what I’ve done. I’ve given myself a fresh start.

⇒ I will write a minimum of 500 words (255 already written and 245 to go).

⇒ I’ll do everything I can to write at least 2,000 words.

However, I have also come to the conclusion that I do have to start taking my stated goals more seriously. I’m not doing myself any favors by constantly failing to meet them. This easy acceptance of failure has set a bad precedent and become a habit I didn’t want to cultivate.

On that note, I’m going back to my writing. I have a book I haven’t given up hope of finishing this month and I need a lot of words for that to happen.

Update: I wrote 565 words. Not as many as I wanted but beyond that minimum. That’s an okay result. Definitely happy to have stuck to my resolve to get that minimum.

It’s time for a late night writing spree :)

First, does it count as a late night writing spree if it starts at 9:32 pm? That doesn’t feel like late night to me. However, this is likely to take a while, so I’m predicting a late night here.

I have a 500 word daily minimum to hit. I didn’t hit it yesterday or the day before and I don’t want to let that streak get out of hand.

My reasons for not writing that daily minimum of words is the usual. I just couldn’t get started yesterday at all.

I looked at my story before I wrote this, so I’ve gotten a head start, technically. In actuality, I deleted the last few paragraphs of chapter 9 and lost 97 words, starting me off in the hole. It doesn’t affect any of the opening of chapter 10, so that’s okay. I won’t be getting sucked into any revision because of that decision. In fact, I’m pretty sure that might be a sign that I needed to get rid of those paragraphs all along.

I seem to get stuck a lot and I’m not sure why or what that says about me or my writing process.

Now, it’s time to go write. I’ll be back with updates.

Update 8/25/18

And… that failed spectacularly. As soon as I settled down and stopped moving around much, I got sleepy. So sleepy that I finally just gave up, hibernated the computer, and went to bed.

So I accomplished almost nothing last night.

My ending word count on my book: 21,161.

Meaning I didn’t even write enough to cover the 97 words I deleted.

August word count update

August word count to date = 7,258*

That’s a far cry from where I wanted to be by now when I started August. I’ve had a few good days, though. Specifically, the 16th and the 20th.

8/16 – 1,685
8/20 – 2,198

The rest of the days of this month have been mediocre at best.

Yesterday, I’d hoped for a repeat of my 2,000+ words day, but it didn’t happen. And today is looking even worse.

8/21 – 571 words
8/22 – 53 words (so far)

*Today is still in progress, although I’m not sure it’s going to get much better if I can’t find some way to convince myself to finish writing the scene I’m in the middle of. I just do not want to write the rest of this scene.

I’m trying very hard to decide if I want to delete the portion of the scene that I haven’t wanted to write today or to push on through. There’s also the fact that if I delete it and write, even though the words will be gone, I’ll at least be writing again. But it could lead me to end the day with in a negative position if I don’t write enough. However, the words aren’t doing me any good if they’re just getting in the way of my brain coming up with an alternative so getting rid of them could be my best way forward.

The best way to figure this all out is to start back through the chapter and just go with it, changing or deleting if I need to so the story can move forward again, but I’m just feeling very resistant to that and have been all day.

But… it’s time to decide and do something, because this book isn’t going to write itself and I’m trying to end the week with 14,000 words.

2198+571+53=2822
14000-2822=11178

(I really love how you can type math into OneNote and it solves it for you.) :D

I have 11,178 words still to write this week, and I should probably try to get a least a few (more) of them written tonight.

 

Trying again for my first 2,000 word day in a while

Yesterday’s attempt at writing 2,000 words was a bust. Of all the legitimate things that got in the way, none of them were significant enough to physically stop me from sitting down and writing 2,000 words. My inability to focus came from my mental reaction to the day’s events.

A lot of little things just got in the way in my head and really made it difficult for me to concentrate on writing.

I don’t want that to happen again today.

I actually started off strong this morning. I’ve already written 357 words today.

But… it’s now apparent that the air conditioner might not be fixed, and that’s really got a hold on my brain, and my kid is leaving for college this weekend and is packing and interrupting me at regular intervals, and that’s distracting in a big way.

The fact remains that I still need to do my writing today. I’m behind on this book, and I need to finish it so I can publish it and move on to the next book. I also really need to publish a few books this year for the sake of my bank account. :)

Things are going well with the story and I think I can make a lot of progress today if I can just stay focused on writing the book. I also need to get that first 2,000 word day to start off that 2,000 words a day plan of mine.

I’ve used this little break to clear my head, I hope, and now I’m going back to writing. My book is sitting at 19,756 words right now. I’d like not to stop for lunch until I’m above 21,000 words.

Update: It’s 9:08 pm and I’m sitting at 890 words for the day.

I wanted to be at or above 2,000 words by now, but that hasn’t happened. Obviously. :) But! The air conditioner is working again (repairman came) and that worry is gone and I’m finally feeling able to concentrate again.

Since I don’t want to end tonight without reaching 2,000 words, I’m here at the computer to write another 1,110 words.

Update: 1,506 words. Man, this is getting hard. I’m sooooo sleepy. It’s 12:01 and I have 494 words to go. I don’t know if I’m going to make it.

Update: I settled for 1,685 words. I was too sleepy to continue. This morning, looking at that, it’s easy to say I should have kept going, but last night? There was just no way.

On the bright side, that number of words is above the lower limit I’d set for myself in some calculations I did when I decided to write 2,000 words a day. I ended up settling on 2,000, which is between the two values.

50,000 75,000
1,644 2,466