Well, I can still give excuses, but that’s not going to get my word count up. It was a lame week to wrap up the worst month I’ve had this year. So at least I know I can’t just dawdle around anymore. I’m behind, but it’s not a disaster. Yet.
With this said, here’s the totals from last week and last month.
Writing statistics for the week ending 30 August 2025:
Words: 2,504
Days writing: 4 of 7.
Days revising or planning: 3 of 7 for 420 minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 5 of 7 days.
Writing statistics for August 2025:
Words: 12,447
Revise/Plan: 600 Minutes
DWGM: 75 percent.
Other than the time spent revising and planning other work, which seems to be among the median amount I’ve done on a monthly basis this year, this is easily the worst month I’ve had productivity-wise this year. It’s the least productive by at least 4,000 words (4,351 per week is what I’ve been shooting for at least since I started this year) and the least consistent I’ve been writing during that time as well.
My goals at to write to 225,000 words by the end of this year and to meet my daily writing goal (or quota) at least 80 percent of the time. At that rate, I should have written 150,000 words by this point. By my count of words written from January to the end of August, however, I am under that number by fewer than 300 words.
I’m going to say, I’m not looking for excuses for why my productivity tanked this month. What I am trying to sort out in my head is an explanation of how I went from a few thousand words ahead of pace to a couple of hundred words behind it.
With this very much on my mind, I ended up posting this on my socials today.
So, what would you call it when you have all these ideas rattling around in your head, you’ve worked them out in your notebooks, and yet when you sit down at the desk and try to put them down on the (electric) page, but the words aren’t landing or even starting to land? I mean, is that just plain laziness, or is there some condition akin to writer’s block which covers this? I have the ideas, I’m just stalling at putting them on the page.
Maybe I’m getting a bit tired of trying to do a third Yank Striker book when there’s several other stories I want to get into. Maybe I’ve been discouraged by the lack of public interest in these novels. And maybe I’m in the mood to write a novel about Iowa that’s not some paean to the ideal agri-paradise of Iowa, but a horror tale that might relate to my fellow Iowans, something that could tell a tale of what Iowa is like now.
I’ve gone far enough where I have a name for the main setting of these books, an amalgam of the Mississippi River towns I’ve lived in for more than forty years of my life. At the end of last week, I even sketched out a map for the place in one of my notebooks. It’s starting to become home now, at least in my head. As I’ve said before, I’ll look forward to introducing it to all of you sometime soon.
I don’t have anything else to say at the moment. I’m a bit down about letting myself get this much into a slump. Now, however, I’ve got a chance of getting it all back. Later.
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