Writing Journal, 1 June 2023: Promotion is a time suck (but I’ll call last week a win)

Welcome back.

It’s my summer break, but I haven’t been lying around the house.

I’ve seen the soft launch of my book The Yank Striker just earlier this week, but ever since I got on break March 20, I’ve been busy emailing different people, posting online, and related stuff. A lot of busywork, and it’s always going to be tough to say how effective it’s going to be. I’m going to be on a bit of a mini-tour this summer. I will say I’m much more aware of concepts of marketing, although I have to say that I’m still green when it comes to it.

I was really worried about how this past week was going to look. I had a couple of weeks that were for me sub par, below 3,000 words written in a week. I usually don’t get impressed by my numbers at all unless they’re over 4,000. I usually have a down month of May because I’m beginning to decompress from the school year, and this year I had slightly more to decompress from than in some years. In addition, I had all the promotion stuff that took up a lot of time, and I thought my productivity was really going to go down the tubes last week.

Imagine my surprise when that didn’t turn out to be the case.

Writing statistics for the week ending 27 May 2023:
+3,801 words written.
Days writing: 5 of 7.
Days revising/planning: 3 of 7 for 90 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 7 of 7 days.

So, the word count is at least 1,000 words higher than my last two weekly totals, and I met all my daily quotas last week. Given this is May and given that I was hitting the promotional duties hard, I will be happy with those results… but I’ll be even happier if I get that number over 4,000 next week at least.

That’s it for now. Take care of yourselves.

If you want more information about my new book The Yank Striker: A Footballer’s Beginning, check out the My Work page on this site here.

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Writing Journal, 24 May 2023: Getting down to business on break

Hello to everyone.

I’m finally done with the school year, so the summer now stretches before me as far as writing progress goes. I am aware I usually have a slump the past couple of years immediately before and after the end of the school year, so I am hoping that I avoid it this year.

But, it’s not happening yet.

I’ve had two weeks in a row where I’ve written less than 3,000 words. I’m not satisfied any longer with my productivity unless I’m at least over 4,000 words in any given week. That is the pace I managed to hit on a regular basis last year, and it’s now the minimum I expect out of myself. And, if I’m going to shake myself out of a writing slump, this week is the week to start doing it.

However, another issue for me is the promotional campaign I’m setting up for my newest book, The Yank Striker, which I talked about last week. I want to devote more time and thought to this campaign than I did with my first book. I believe I learned a couple things from my first experience, although I will readily admit I would not consider myself a marketing guru by any means. Considering that I’m living near the biggest media market in my state (Des Moines), I think I have a better chance at getting noticed than before. However, I’ll be doing a lot of phone calls, emails, and plenty of reading up on different networking and marketing ideas all this week.

Anyway, here’s the stats for last week.

Writing statistics for the week ending 20 May 2023:
+2,711 words written.
Days writing: 5 of 7.
Days revising/planning: 4 of 7 for 210 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 6 of 7 days.

Well, better luck for me next week. All you writers keep writing, and everyone keep safe.

Writing Journal, 17 May 2023: Looking for this to be a blip rather than a trend

Hello to everyone.

I am hoping that the previous week was, as the title says, more of a blip than a trend. During the past couple of years, I’ve noticed a bit of a slacking off as I get to the end of the school year. I have to say that by the end of the school year, even during good years, I can get mentally exhausted once school is over and it takes me another two weeks before I can take a deep breath and even begin to properly recover.

As a result, my writing productivity has usually fallen off a cliff in May, especially during the last days of the school year and immediately afterward. I’ve noticed the trend enough that I am going to try to avoid it, although last week’s productivity was nowhere near the levels of the previous week.

However, to paraphrase Frank Herbert in Dune, the key to avoiding a trap is to know that there is a trap in the first place. Unlike previous years, I have committed to writing on a much regular basis with my two blogs than I have before in past years, so I am hoping I avoid as big of a drop as I did before. In addition, I have a bit more to write about that I have in the past couple of years.

Was that a bit of a spoiler? I guess you’re going to have to keep your eyes open to find out.

With that in mind, here’s the stats for last week.

Writing statistics for the week ending 13 May 2023:
+2,793 words written.
Days writing: 4 of 7.
Days revising/planning: 3 of 7 for 120 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 6 of 7 days.

Well, that’s about it for now. Like I said, keep your eyes on this space. A lot more is going to show up here than just word counts…

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Writing Journal, 10 May 2023: This was a bit late…

[AUTHOR’s NOTE: Well, this is bizarre – I didn’t set this up to publish on last Wednesday like I normally do. Well, better late than never, anyway.]

Welcome back.

I was a bit surprised to see as much productivity as I have this previous week. I have been spending some time looking over some of my past writing journals. I was a bit embarrassed, especially in 2019 and 2020, just flake out on blogging a lot of times because I wasn’t ambitious enough or motivated enough to get a regular blogging schedule going. I feel much better looking over 2022 and the first part of 2023 and seeing much more regular posting. If I get really good I might do better than posting twice a week on WordPress and Substack combined.

With a bit of hard writing at both ends of the week and some thorough revision work in the middle, I ended up with some numbers that I’m quite happy with. I’m hoping this can be part of a good streak, although I think it is better to be consistent rather than really great one week and terrible the next. I’ve been having better results, anyway.

Anyway, here’s the stats for last week.

Writing statistics for the week ending 6 May 2023:
+5,640 words written.
Days writing: 4 of 7.
Days revising/planning: 5 of 7 for 390 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 7 of 7 days.

That’s it for now. Hope to see you around soon.

Writing Journal, 3 May 2023: April wasn’t my month, but it wasn’t a disaster

Ugh, as my wife would say.

Several trips out of town, toiling with revisions to several projects, and maybe a general malaise has set in and given me probably the worst numbers of any month so far in 2023. However, I’m still in generally good shape, productivity-wise.

As a reminder, my goal this year as far as writing productivity was for 200,000 words in a year and to meet my daily production quota (500 words per day or 30 minutes of revisions/planning) at least 75 percent of the time. Given some of my past performances, I felt that this was reachable.

The stats for last week were not the best, but not a tragedy.

Writing statistics for the week ending 29 April 2023:
+2,621 words written.
Days writing: 3 of 7.
Days revising/planning: 2 of 7 for 60 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 5 of 7 days.

Not great numbers, but not an official block or slump, either. Again, the numbers for April 2023 were the lowest for any month this year so far.

Writing statistics for April 2023:
Words: 13,483
Revising/planning: 990 minutes
Daily Writing Goals Met: 89%

However, my overall numbers for the year to-date are looking good. At this point in the year, I should have written 66,667 words. I am more than 5,000 words above that total. I have also met my daily writing quota 92.5 percent of the time, well above the 75 percent mark I am trying to meet for the year. It seems clear that the more I am aware of my productivity and what I can do as a writer, the less likely I am to enter slumps or not understand what is going on.

Well, see you next week.

Writing Journal, 26 April 2023: A good week gives me hope that I might make my goal this month

And a good day to everyone.

Considering that there’s only about four weeks in this month and that I had two subpar weeks of writing beforehand, I was a bit worried that I would make my word count “quota” for this month.

I’ll explain it like this. I am trying to get to 200,000 words per year, which after last year’s numbers seems like a very reachable goal, given my past productivity. In case you were curious, that would require me to write an average of 16,667 words per month to reach that goal.

During the first three months of the year, I have well-exceeded that total in January and March and narrowly missed out on it in February. By my calculations, I would need to be at 66,667 words for the year to date at the end of April to be on pace with my goal. This past week has catapulted me past that total and I am hoping to add a few thousand words to that “cushion,” so to speak.

Anyway, here’s the stats for last week.

Writing statistics for the week ending 22 April 2023:
+6,260 words written.
Days writing: 7 of 7.
Days revising/planning: 1 of 7 for 120 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 7 of 7 days.

So, that is it for now. I’m hoping for another good week this week to finish up April. See you next week.

Writing Journal, 19 April 2023: Not the effort I expect from myself, honestly

I have to say last week wore me out mentally, as far as writing and revising went. Getting all the revising done for the second round of The Yank Striker was a days-long slog, even though it needed to be done. And, I just managed to get out the weekly newsletter and my piece about Substack Notes – even though the latter was typed out in a white heat on Sunday of this week, so it doesn’t count for last week’s numbers.

These are explanations for the lower numbers (even lower numbers for the revisions, which doesn’t quite make sense for me), but they are not excuses. Could I have gotten out a few more words during certain days? I definitely could. However, that is one of the reasons why I continue to publicly post these writing numbers. I want to make myself accountable, even if I’m the only one seeing these posts.

Anyway, here are my numbers. I’ll leave the rest of it to Saturday’s post.

Writing statistics for the week ending 15 April 2023:
+1,703 words written.
Days writing: 2 of 7.
Days revising/planning: 5 of 7 for 390 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 6 of 7 days.

That’s it; I’ll see you next week.

Writing Journal, 12 April 2023: Slow week for putting out new material but very busy with revisions

Hello everyone.

Last week essentially was what I said in the unwieldy title. I usually try and write more than 4,000 words per week, but I didn’t get to that point. However, I was doing a lot of revisions on my new project, The Yank Striker. I’ll update everyone on how that process is going during my weekly newsletter when it comes out on Saturday.

The upshot is, since I have a daily quota of either 500 words per day or 30 minutes of revising and/or planning work, I still managed to achieve that daily quota all seven days of the week. One of my various goals for this year, along with writing 200,000 words this year, is meeting my daily quota an average of at least 75 percent of the time throughout the year. Since I’ve met that quota at least 90 percent of the time for the past three months, and 100 percent of the time this week… well, I’m not counting my victories before I win them, but I think I’m definitely on the right track from a production standpoint.

Here’s the stats for last week.

Writing statistics for the week ending 8 April 2023:
+2,899 words written.
Days writing: 4 of 7.
Days revising/planning: 4 of 7 for 420 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 7 of 7 days.

By the way, that’s more revising/planning minutes last week than I managed in the entire month of January. Heady stuff.

Writing Journal, 5 April 2023: Productivity is cooking

Aaaaand I’m back.

I already wrote the title before looking at the numbers, and I would have to say last week was productive but not as productive as the previous week. However, I was well over the 4,000-word mark, which typically indicates I’m on a good pace. Anyway, here’s the stats for last week.

Writing statistics for the week ending 1 April 2023:
+4,248 words written.
Days writing: 7 of 7.
Days revising/planning: 0 of 7 for 0 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 6 of 7 days.

As we have passed the month of March, I also decided to include last month’s numbers, as well.

Writing statistics for March 2023:
Words: 22,813
Revise/Plan: 945 Minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met: 91 percent

So, this was the highest number of words I’ve yet had for 2023, the second highest amount of revisions and planning, and the lowest level of daily writing goals met so far this year. However, I should note that it is still over 90 percent (as it has been all year), and my goal in that category was 75 percent for the year. I can always have a bad streak of being unproductive, but I think this is a good start to the year.

Speaking for a good start of the year, I had planned on writing at least 200,000 words like I did last year. Right now, I’m nearly 9,000 words ahead of that pace, so I feel good about that. Considering all of the writing that I have been doing consistently both here and on my Substack page, I’m going to be very curious as to how that might affect my numbers for this year.

Even though most of my writings online tend to not be as long as my longer fiction projects, I’m thinking that the effect of me “going pro” might be generally positive for my productivity. And if you haven’t guessed, all of these writing journals will remain free and not “premium” content.

Only time will tell, I guess. Well, see all of you next time.

Writing Journal, 29 March 2023: Hopefully nailing the home stretch of March

Ah, good to see anyone who showed up. 🙂

Looking back over the past week, it looks like I managed to pick up the pace at the right time. I always like one of these longer months with an extra week or so to catch up if I’m not making my quota on a regular basis.

However, I have to say that March has been pretty good for me, productivity-wise. It’s only been last week that I had a so-so productive week, and I didn’t see any real collapse in numbers.

Aaaaand here’s the numbers:

Writing statistics for the week ending 25 March 2023:
+5,766 words written.
Days writing: 7 of 7.
Days revising/planning: 1 of 7 for 120 total minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 7 of 7 days.

So, the only complaint I might have about my productivity might be that I only had 120 minutes of revisions and/or planning this week, but I think that is going to pick up this week with me getting started on revisions for my second proof of The Yank Striker. We’ll see how it goes. Later.

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