On these writing journals I often talk about how I’ve been doing on my yearly goals, but I recapped my 2025 writing goals and previewed my 2026 goals here, so go to the link if you are curious (spoiler alert, I had a good year).

We started 2026 in the middle of the week, so I didn’t have too much time to write (three compared to seven days). However, since this covered the end of my vacation time (winter break), I was able to be pretty productive over a short period of time.

With that, I’ll review the numbers.

Writing statistics for the week ending 3 January 2026: [NOTE: This week only covers three days due to the end of the year dropping on last Wednesday.]
Words: 3,180
Days writing: 3 of 3.
Days revising or planning: 0 of 3 for 0 minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 3 of 3 days.

Considering I will have to write somewhere around 630 words a day to ensure I write somewhere in the neighborhood of 230,000 words in 2026, averaging over 1,000 words a day (never an easy feat for me) is a great jump start on that goal. All I need to do is keep it up, but I know from last December and the latter part of last summer how tough that focus can be. Let’s see how it goes.

I’m working on more than a few projects at the moment (go here to find out what they are – look in the 2026 goals section), but The Land, The River, and The Waste (working title due to me being a superstitious sucker) is still my top project now, an environmental horror tale set in a little river town on the Mississippi River in Iowa. To try and cut down on the amount of recaps I have to do on some of these newsletters and writing journals, I’m thinking about coming up with a separate post where I could put extended synopses of my projects. Something to sort out later.

Have a good week everyone, and all you writers keep writing.

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It wasn’t exactly the amount of writing I wanted to get done this week, but it was a far better sight than what I ended up with last week, so I’ll take it as a draw if not a minor win. Whether it works out in the greater scheme of my yearly goal … I’ll guess we’ll see.

With that, I’ll review the numbers.

Writing statistics for the week ending 20 December 2025:
Words: 4,122
Days writing: 5 of 7.
Days revising or planning: 0 of 7 for 0 minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 5 of 7 days.

So, not the level I was hoping for, but much better than last week’s total. I’ll call that a win, especially since it’s 1,500 more words than last week. But is it enough?

The overall stats:

Overall Statistics for 2025:
Word count goal for 2025: 225,000 words.
Word count for 2025 as of 20 December 2025: 219,864 words.
Words remaining toward goal: 5,138.
Confidence level in meeting my word count: HIGH.

One good writing week. All I need is one good writing week and I’m going to be right at my goal. I can taste it, lads, lasses, and others, I can taste it. I’ll have written more words than I’ve ever written in my life, and all I can think of is producing more, getting more product out the door than the three novels, poetry collection, blog posts, and various unpublished short stories I’ve written.

The Land, The River, and The Waste (working title due to me being a superstitious sucker) is still my top project now, an environmental horror tale set in a little river town on the Mississippi River in Iowa. I’m now up to 22,000 words for the first draft, and to make progress with the story, I took the clever and cunning idea to only write the interesting parts of the story first so I don’t get bored with it. It’s something I came up with a few years back to knock out writer’s block. Turns out writing all of the cool scenes first helps out with this problem (although I always save the final scene for last). It’s also a good way to tighten up your story if that is your thing (it definitely is mine).

In putting this together, I came upon two realizations: first, this post would be running on Christmas Eve (Happy Holidays, by the way), which is no big deal because I always do these writing journals in advance. But the other realization is that if I stick to this schedule, I would make the next writing journal on 31 December 2025. Since I will be working to get my writing total wrapped up and total up all the numbers for the year, I’m going to make the decision to make this the last writing journal of the year and wait until doing the first newsletter of the year (call it 3 January 2026?) to report on whether or not I made all of my writing goals for the year. No big deal to wait for a bit, and I’ll do the first official writing journal for 2026 on 7 January 2026. It’s all good.

Have a good week everyone, and all you writers keep writing.

---

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While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.

Six weeks of good productivity, and the seventh week it goes into the tank. Well, all I need to keep in mind is to keep things trucking for the next two and a half weeks and I’ll be good to go for my writing goals this year.

With that, I’ll review the numbers.

Writing statistics for the week ending 13 December 2025:
Words: 2,610
Days writing: 3 of 7.
Days revising or planning: 2 of 7 for 60 minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 5 of 7 days.

Unlike last week, I didn’t quite manage to pull it out at the end, but oh, well. I just have to remind myself of all the days, weeks, months, and years where I went without even bothering to write anything. Those days seem to be far away from me nowadays, thankfully.

The overall stats:

Overall Statistics for 2025:
Word count goal for 2025: 225,000 words.
Word count for 2025 as of 13 December 2025: 215,742 words.
Words remaining toward goal: 9,258.
Confidence level in meeting my word count: HIGH.

The Land, The River, and The Waste (working title due to me being a superstitious sucker) is my top project now, an environmental horror tales set in a little river town on the Mississippi River in Iowa. As the writing this week slowed down, so did progress on this project as well. I think part of it is the reason that I am wrapping up the first act of the book, and now I’m starting to think of whether any of the new scenes are necessary or not. Or maybe I just need to push forward because it’s just a first draft and I can mold things around if I need to later.

Have a good week everyone, and all you writers keep writing¹.

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While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.

1. Featured photo courtesy of my wife, Laura Liegois. ↩︎

I was proud of my productivity this week. Not because it was particularly good, but because I was falling behind at one point. However, instead of just accepting it, I started pushing myself harder and had a good last couple of days.

With that, I’ll review the numbers.

Writing statistics for the week ending 6 December 2025:
Words: 4,228
Days writing: 5 of 7.
Days revising or planning: 2 of 7 for 180 minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 6 of 7 days.

Again, if it wasn’t for the last two days of the week, I would have had something more closer to 3,000 words or less. I’m glad I pushed back against myself on this issue.

The overall stats:

OStatistics for 2025:
Word count goal for 2025: 225,000 words.
Word count for 2025 as of 6 December 2025: 213,132 words.
Words remaining toward goal: 11,868.
Confidence level in meeting my word count: HIGH.

Again, The Land, The River, and The Waste (working title due to me being a superstitious sucker) has been my most active project, not including my blogs. It’s an environmental horror tales set in a little river town on the Mississippi River in Iowa, not unlike the ones I’ve lived in for most of my life. I’m now close to 20,000 words into the first draft. I think, from where I feel I’m at in the story, that I’m approaching the end of the first act of the story. I could do with a good 75,000-word novel, I think.

Have a good week everyone, and all you writers keep writing.

---

If you don’t have the budget for a paid subscription, feel free to just send me a one-time payment of whatever you have the budget for.

While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.

Back at the end of August this year, when I was getting ready for the upcoming school year, I was very much nervous about doing what I had to do to make my goal for the year. I was way behind.

Now, however, I’ve had the third-best month of the year so far, and my fifth consecutive week of writing more than 5,000 words. How momentum changes.

Let’s talk about the numbers.

Writing statistics for the week ending 29 November 2025:
Words: 5,447
Days writing: 7 of 7.
Days revising or planning: 1 of 7 for 60 minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 6 of 7 days.

Writing statistics for November 2025:
Words: 23,431.
Revising/planning: 120 minutes.
DWGM: 97%

Once again, my goal for the calendar year 2025 is to write 225,000 words. (I was also shooting to make my minimum daily quota at least 80 percent of the time, but since I am feeling quite confident of making this goal, my focus for the most part has been on word count.)

The stats for the month ahead are looking good.

Ongoing statistics for 2025:
Word count as of 1 December 2025: 208,904. This number is 2,654 words above the “pace” to reach 225,000 words by the end of 31 December 2025.

I now have 16,096 words left to write before reaching my yearly goal. To keep this in perspective, I have exceeded this word count during nine out of the past 11 months of 2025, including the past two months.
Confidence level in meeting my word count: HIGH.

It’s been a feverish run since Halloween 2025, when I began writing The Land, The River, and The Waste (working title due to me being a superstitious sucker). It’s an environmental horror tales set in a little river town on the Mississippi River in Iowa, not unlike the ones I’ve lived in for most of my life. I’m now above 17,000 words into the first draft.

I’ve not had a chance to write much on some of my other projects during the past month other than my regular blogging and the odd poem or two, but that’s all right. I think. This is the project that is motivating me and the rest can stay on the back burner for now.

Have a good week everyone, and all you writers keep writing.

---

If you don’t have the budget for a paid subscription, feel free to just send me a one-time payment of whatever you have the budget for.

While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.

Even though I had a slightly slower week than the past three weeks, this was still the fourth consecutive week I’ve written more than 5,000 words. And from my math, I’m on pace to make my goal … and maybe then some.

Let’s talk about the numbers.

Writing statistics for the week ending 22 November 2025:
Words: 5,257
Days writing: 7 of 7.
Days revising or planning: 1 of 7 for 30 minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 7 of 7 days.

Once again, my goal for the calendar year 2025 is to write 225,000 words. Since at least August, I’ve felt I was falling behind on my expectations, with just 12,447 in August, 15,559 in September, and barely more than 20,000 in October.

Now, however, I’ve crunched a few numbers and things are looking very much up for me.

Ongoing statistics for 2025:
Word count as of 1 November 2025: 185,473. This number was 2,027 words off the “pace” to reach 225,000 words by the end of 31 December 2025.

Word count as of 22 November of 2025: 203,457. By my recollection, this is the earliest I have reached 200,000 words for a calendar year ever.

I now have, as of 22 November 2025, 21,543 words left before reaching my yearly goal.

Also, by my calculations, if I wrote at least 5,000 words this week, I would then be more than 2,000 words ahead of my desired pace.

But I’ve turned things around this month. And there’s a little environmentally-themed sci-fi horror project I have to give plenty of credit to for helping my productivity.

On Halloween 2025, I began writing The Land, The River, and The Waste (working title due to me being a superstitious sucker) Set in a little river town on the Mississippi River in Iowa, and this has been the project that’s grabbed my attention and not let go. I’m already close to 14,000 words into the first draft.

This might be one of the most personal stories I’ve yet written. During a conversation with one of my students last week, I suddenly slipped and referred to my hometown by the fictional name of my town in the book, and not my actual hometown. That gave me pause, but the students I was talking with didn’t notice it.

Have a good week everyone, and all you writers keep writing.

---

If you don’t have the budget for a paid subscription, feel free to just send me a one-time payment of whatever you have the budget for.

While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.

Three good writing weeks in a row (as the Count from Sesame Street might have said), and this one was the best of the bunch (nearly a 1,000 more words than last week. Might I be on a streak here?

The stats:

Writing statistics for the week ending 15 November 2025:
Words: 6.847
Days writing: 7 of 7.
Days revising or planning: 0 of 7 for 0 minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 7 of 7 days.

My goal for the year is to write 225,000 words during the 2025 calendar year. As of the beginning of this week (11 days from Thanksgiving) I was just 1,800 words away from the 200,000 mark. I’ve gone from feeling like I was running behind pace for my goal for the past three months to having it well within my grasp.

On Halloween 2025, The Land, The River, and The Waste (working title due to me being a superstitious sucker), the sci-fi horror project in a little river town on the Mississippi River in Iowa, was just some ideas bopping around in my head and decorating my notebooks. Now I have a rough draft manuscript of around 9,000 words and it continues to grow. It feels like I’m writing about home when I’m doing this story. It’s become as personal of a story as I think I’ve written, and I want to see how it plays out.

Have a good week everyone, and all you writers keep writing.

---

If you don’t have the budget for a paid subscription, feel free to just send me a one-time payment of whatever you have the budget for.

While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.

Two good writing weeks in a row, and this one was better than last week’s. So, it’s looking up.

Last week’s stats:

Writing statistics for the week ending 8 November 2025:
Words: 5,880
Days writing: 6 of 7.
Days revising or planning: 1 of 7 for 30 minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 7 of 7 days.

As of the end of October, I had slightly less than 40,000 words left to reach my goal of 225,000 words for 2025. This means I’ll have to average close to 5,000 words per week to make it work. And now I just have to push myself for the rest of the year.

I’m currently calling the sci-fi horror project in a little river town on the Mississippi River in Iowa The Land, The River, and The Waste. Keep in mind this is just the working title I am using, and that I will usually go with another title before I finally publish a project. I’m superstitious in this regard. After more than a week of writing, I’m already over 5,000 words, so good on me for this. I’m not sure I could write 40,000 words in a month like the old National Novel Writing Month, but I do know I have it in me to do it in two months easily.

Get in, everyone.

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If you don’t have the budget for a paid subscription, feel free to just send me a one-time payment of whatever you have the budget for.

While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.

After two bad months of writing in a row, I felt good about having a decent month and a great last week to October. However, how far behind am I with trying to write 225,000 words this year? Time to find out.

Here’s the stats for last week and for the month of October:

Writing statistics for the week ending 1 November 2025:
Words: 5,315
Days writing: 6 of 7.
Days revising or planning: 2 of 7 for 120 minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 7 of 7 days.

Writing statistics for October 2025:
Words: 20,201
Revising and planning: 1,020 minutes.
DWGM: 83%

As of the end of October 2025, I have written 185,473 words for this calendar year. If I was keeping on pace, I would have written 187,500, so I am 2,027 words off the pace … which is not good, but not fatal.

I have 39,527 words left to get to my goal, which would mean writing about 19,764 words per month for the next two months. I’ve written more than that amount four out of 10 months out of this year. It is difficult, but not impossible. I’ll have to average close to 5,000 words per week to make it work. Again, difficult, but not impossible.

The sci-fi horror project in a little river town on the Mississippi River in Iowa I talked about last week? I just started the rough draft on Halloween night. I’m hoping it’s going to drive my output. Now, if I treated this month just like the late lamented National Novel Writers Month of old, I could knock out 40,000 or 50,000 words before the month is out. Maybe I can do it with this book. It’s called to me more than anything I’ve had in my head for a while. Like I said last week, at least I’m going to go down trying.

Two more months. Let’s do this.

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If you don’t have the budget for a paid subscription, feel free to just send me a one-time payment of whatever you have the budget for.

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It just feels like I’m having the same stupid week every week for the past three weeks at least.

Here’s the stats for last week:

Writing statistics for the week ending 25 October 2025:
Words: 3,247
Days writing: 5 of 7.
Days revising or planning: 2 of 7 for 120 minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 5 of 7 days.

I think I’ve been coming down to my basement, fiddling around at my desk, and getting distracted. That’s the long and short of it. I’ve been looking forward to finishing books up, but I keep expecting someone to write it for me, it seems. If there was a time where I can understand the temptation to feed an idea into ChatGPT and have them write it for you, now might be that time¹.

I’ve had this idea of a sci-fi horror project in a little river town on the Mississippi River in Iowa, much like the ones I’ve lived in most of my life. I feel like it’s calling to me. At this point I want to write it more than anything I’ve got in my head, in my hard drives, or on my bookshelves. I don’t even have a prospective publisher for this, but I have the urge to make this even if I have to self-publish it.

At this point, I’m not sure if I’m going to make the goal of 225,000 words written for 2025. At the end of this week, I’m going to take a look at how much I’ve written and how much I’m off pace. If I miss my goal this year, at least I’m going to go down trying.

Better luck next week for me.

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If you don’t have the budget for a paid subscription, feel free to just send me a one-time payment of whatever you have the budget for.

While I do appreciate you following this blog, I really would like you to subscribe to my Substack page. By subscribing to that page, you’ll not only be receiving my Substack newsletter, The Writing Life With Jason Liegois (the companion blog to this one), but you’ll also be signing up for my email list. Just click the button below.

1. ↩︎