Writing Journal, 7 June 2023: I think I sort of avoided the end of the school year slump

Hello to everyone.

It seems like every year over the past five years, I appear to have a noticeable slump in my writing productivity during the month of May. I’ve long attributed this to the fact that as a teacher, it is the end of the school year and the beginning of summer vacation. Typically, I’ve noticed it takes about two whole weeks to begin to decompress from the school year and clear my mind.

If you had been watching this space for the past several weeks, I had been openly fretting that I wasn’t going to be productive enough to get to my goals. Plus, I had at least a couple of sub-par weeks during the earlier part of May.

However, it appears being proactive and aware of my tendencies seems to have paid off in this case.

Writing statistics for the week ending 3 June 2023:
4,297 words written.
Days writing: 6 out of 7.
Days revising/planning 1 out of 7 for 60 minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met: 5 out of 7 days.

Writing statistics for May 2023:
Words: 19,242
Revise/Plan: 870 minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met: 89%

For last week, any total above 4,000 is good, and an improvement on the previous week. I would have liked to have been more consistent with my work than five out of seven days, but I’m getting picky. I need to be picky, or I wouldn’t improve.

As for the May 2023 numbers… I’m pretty happy with them. I’m usually not impressed with a monthly word count of less than 20,000 words. But in looking back over my past five years of records, this is the second-best May I’ve ever had, losing out to May 2020 by a little more than 500 words. And that 89% success ratio in meeting my daily goals is the best I’ve ever had for May, beating out May 2020’s total of 75%.

As of the end of May, I am ahead of pace to reach my 200,000 word goal for 2023 by at least 8,300 words. Also, I am currently meeting my daily writing quota nearly 92 percent of the time, well ahead of my yearly target of 75 percent.

So, I’m quietly satisfied but not cocky. I’ve still got more than half the year to go. I’ll see if I can keep this up.

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