At the very least, I finished up August pretty well with the best week of the month yet. Of course the month sucked at far as writing productivity went, but looking over my overall numbers, I’m in a pretty good spot.
First, I’ll give the numbers for this past week and for the past month.
Writing statistics for the week ending 31 August 2024:
5,268 words written.
Days writing: 6 of 7.
Days revising/planning: 2 of 7 for 240 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 6 of 7 days.
Writing statistics for August 2024:
Words: 12,716
Revise/Plan: 570 minutes
Daily Writing Goals Met: 82%
So, this was the best week I’ve had this month by at least 2,000 words, but it was a drop on a month by month basis of at least 10,000 words – not a good thing. My revision and planning time have shrunk slightly over the past two months, as well as how often I’ve met my daily writing goals, but not by a significant amount.
However, it appears I am not in a bad position as we enter the final third of the year. With having set a minimum word count of 200,000 words moving forward, I needed to have written 133,333 words by this point in the year. In fact, I’ve written 142,437 as of the end of the month, which puts me 9,104 words ahead of this pace.
That’s good news, but as those who have gone back and read some of my past writing journals might have realized, I’m not really a fan of just sticking to the minimum. Last year, I set a new personal best of 215,152 words, and at this rate I won’t quite make it… but I still have four months to go. Also, as an ex-reporter, I tend to do better when I have a hard deadline. We’ll see what I make of it – I have blown deadlines before, but not often. And I have some incentives to push myself.
I’ve been making much more progress on The Yank Striker 2 than I have in weeks, perhaps months. It would be great if I have a rough draft set and ready for revision by the first of next year, but I have to get really ambitious to make it happen. I’ve done well on continuing work on the Untitled Wrestling Project. When I get stuck for a bit, there’s also some of my dabbling in fan fiction when I get really stuck in planning/revising heck. I’ve also kept the blog going with regular weekly posts.
My experimental chapbook is finally starting to come along. I believe I have enough for a short collection along a unified theme (specifically, river imagery and travel). I’ve had a chance to look at some of the initial attempts I’ve made at poetry over the years and do some subtle revisions that tighten up and strengthen what I already produced. If I can get it put together in a nice little format, I’d even like to print it out by next month. We’ll see how it goes, but as I’m looking at the mockups I’ve produced, it’s feeling more real to me.
All you writers keep writing and everyone keep safe.
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