Writing Journal, 6 December 2023: November was easily the slowest month of this year for me, but I crawled past a milestone

Hi everyone.

Well, it’s official – I had the worst month of writing for 2023 to date. Might as well just show you the total now, as well as last week’s numbers.

Writing statistics for the week ending 2 December 2023:
2,074 words written.
Days writing: 3 of 7.
Days revising/planning: 3 of 7 for 120 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 5 of 7 days.

Writing statistics for November 2023:
Words: 11,653
Revise/Plan: 270 minutes
Daily Writing Goals Met: 75%

The reasons for some of this slump have been discussed and alluded to in some recent writing journals, so I’m not going to rehash them here.

However, it turns out sometime over the last week, I crossed over the 200,000 word mark for the year, the minimum number of fiction and nonfiction words I wanted to write in 2023. As of the end of November 2023, I am at 202,785 words.

(Relieved clapping noises)

My current word count record was set last year at 214,385 words. If I even had a mildly successful month of writing this December, I can easily blow past that mark. 220,000 words is not absolutely out of reach, but I’m not counting my words until I write them just yet.

As for my hopes of meeting my daily quotas as least 75 percent of the time this year… I’ve made that goal as well. Currently, I have met my daily goals 87 percent of the time. Even if I did not meet a single daily goal in December, I would still have met my goals 80 percent of the time, so I have mathematically met this goal as well.

I’m seriously considering whether I try to keep these totals as perhaps minimum quotas and trying to concentrate on other types of goals, but I’ll have to think about it. I want to keep growing and improving both as a writer and with all the other things having to do with professional writing. I’ll probably have something decided in January.

Well, that’s it for now. I’ll check in next week.

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