This will be short.

I’ve had some rough weeks that have been under-productive, to say the least. It’s just been me stubbornly staring at the screen and expecting the words just to fly onto the screen.

The numbers:

Writing statistics for the week ending 21 February 2026:
Words: 3,128
Days writing: 6 of 7.
Days revising or planning: 0 of 7 for 0 minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 4 of 7 days.

Too many distractions is all I can say. I need to break the streak I’ve been running nearly this entire month. Somehow I get the feeling the month of February is a slump month for me, and I have to keep this in mind for next year and beyond.

The project I call (for now; I’m so superstitious of working titles) The Land, The River, and The Waste, an environmental horror tale set in a little Mississippi River town in Iowa, is my main fiction focus. I need to stop screwing around and get the action going in this story; there seems to be a few too much talk talk and not enough go go to it. If I want to have a rough draft by Halloween 2026… you know.

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

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I’ve only got two weeks to turn around what is turning out to be not so good of a month as January was. Writing a book is an accomplishment, but it’s always easier to have a rough draft in your hands rather than trying to write it.

And cell phones are the devil, kids. Take my word for it.

The numbers:

Writing statistics for the week ending 14 February 2026:
Words: 3,293
Days writing: 7 of 7.
Days revising or planning: 3 of 7 for 90 minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 5 of 7 days.

If you want to compare last week to the previous week, I’m ahead by every measurable criteria, which is objectively a good thing.

I often talk about the esoteric reasons why I didn’t write as much as I wanted to, but the past two weeks can be narrowed down to one thing: I get too damn distracted by my cell phone and the things I can see and play on it, if I am to be perfectly honest. Only when I have it plugged in is when I could write a whole bunch and not scroll idly on YouTube, Tubi, Substack, Medium, Facebook, and Universe knows what else. Procrastination and distraction are my devil.

The project I’m calling (for now; I’m so superstitious of working titles) The Land, The River, and The Waste, an environmental horror tale set in a little Mississippi River town in Iowa, is my main fiction focus, but I didn’t make a massive amount of progress on it last week. I only increased the rough manuscript from 31,000 to more than 32,000, which is not a lot for a week’s work. If I want to have a rough draft by Halloween 2026, I need to get the bloody show on the road.

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

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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.

I had a good last month and a decent week before last week … but this weekend was pretty much rubbish. Hence the photo with this story. Before I was inconsistent but at least produced some work; this previous week I was inconsistent and unproductive.

The numbers:

Writing statistics for the week ending 7 February 2026:
Words: 2,695
Days writing: 4 of 7.
Days revising or planning: 1 of 7 for 60 minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 4 of 7 days.

As for why I’m dawdling, I think it’s because I’ve let distractions get over on me and I’m trying to distract myself when I don’t necessarily need to. I feel much better about myself if I remain productive.

The project I started this last Halloween I’m calling (for now; I’m so superstitious of working titles) The Land, The River, and The Waste, an environmental horror tale set in a little Mississippi River town in Iowa.

On that project, I’m now past the 31,000 word mark. Halloween 2026 would be a good, solid deadline for the first draft to be ready, but maybe I can get it done even earlier.

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.

Last week, again, was not a massive success, as I was not keeping up the pace I wanted to hit to keep up my pace to his this year’s productivity numbers. However, this month was a fantastic start for my year, so I’m balancing the bad with the good and hoping I can have some more consistent production for the rest of the year. However, if every month winds up being what this one was… I’m likely to more than meet my goals as a result.

Here are my totals for both the previous week and the previous month:

Writing statistics for the week ending 31 January 2026:
Words: 4,223
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.

Writing statistics for January 2026:
Words: 21,205
Revising or planning: 90 minutes.
DWGM: 74%.

This week’s numbers are a bit low for what I’m trying to average during a week, but only by less than 200 words. Consistency has been my biggest issue this month, which means I’ve had days when I’ve done absolutely nothing and days I’ve written 2,000 words, which is a bit much.

Right now I have a “soft goal” of 230,000 words for 2026. I think it is absolutely doable, considering I wrote only 4,000 or so less words last year. I need to write a little more than 19,000 words per month to reach that goal, but every little bit helps. For example, if I write 20,000 words per month for the next 11 months, I’ll easily hit 240,000 words instead. That’s the equivalent of at least three novel-sized manuscripts, which is a bit eye-opening to me.

project I started this last Halloween I’m calling (for now; I’m so superstitious of working titles) The Land, The River, and The Waste, an environmental horror tale set in a little Mississippi River town in Iowa.

On that project, I’m now past the 30,000 word mark. Halloween 2026 would be a good, solid deadline for the first draft to be ready, but maybe I can get it done even earlier.

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.

Although last week was not a massive success, it did barely meet what I am trying to do as far as writing productivity, so I felt good about those results… and what might be upcoming. More in a bit on that.

First, let’s get into the numbers for last week.

Writing statistics for the week ending 24 January 2026:
Words: 4,503
Days writing: 5 of 7.
Days revising or planning: 2 of 7 for 90 minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 5 of 7 days.

Although the consistency of my production was not quite up to the previous week’s level (6 out of 7 days meeting daily goals), in every other measurement I was keeping busier than before.

My “soft goal” of 230,000 words for 2026 is ambitious, but I think it’s doable considering I wrote only 4,000 or so less words last year and 4,000 words is a subpar week for me nowadays. At some point I’m going to write fewer words than I did the previous year, but the last time it happened was four years ago, and I’ve been on an upward trend since then. Having set a yearly goal ahead of time rather than after the fact has been a benefit for me.

This year, I decided to figure out some monthly and weekly averages I want to reach if I wanted to reach 230,000 words for the year. Figuring the averages, this would mean I’d need to write 630 words daily, 4,423 words weekly, and 19,167 per month. So, any totals over those in the weeks and months to come will be fantastic.

As of right now, I’m at 16,980 words as of the end of last week. Starting the year off with a 20,000-plus word January would be a big boost to start the year.

Speed and productivity are the watchwords for this year. I want to get this project I started this last Halloween I’m calling (for now; I’m so superstitious of working titles) The Land, The River, and The Waste, an environmental horror tale set in a little Mississippi River town in Iowa. I said last week To raise the stakes, get a dog involved. I just started the scene a few days ago, and some pet owners might not be happy with me, but I think I had to do it this way.

On that project, I’m now over 27,000 words and think I’ll need at least 50,000 more to give me a decent-sized first-draft novel. If I could have the first draft wrapped up by this Halloween, that might be the fastest turnaround I’ve ever had on a novel.

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.

Sometimes I get down if I have a slow week. However, I’m glad I feel bothered by having an off-week rather than just passively accept it.

So, let’s see the numbers.

Writing statistics for the week ending 17 January 2026:
Words: 3,872
Days writing: 6 of 7.
Days revising or planning: 0 of 7 for 0 minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 6 of 7 days.

Other than being a bit more consistent in writing during different days, none of this is better than last week’s numbers. A good portion of my writing has been more blog-based rather than the fiction projects. And I feel like I’ve been hunting down my work in progress I got started last Halloween (see the paragraph after the next one). The writer S.E. Reid recently wrote a Substack Note about having her WIP go feral in the nearby woods and trying to convince it to come back home. That was a wonderful metaphor, but I think my story is more like the socially inappropriate friend who’s getting bored with conversing with me quietly, who’s impatient to get back to some of the crazy stories. I probably need to listen to it.

I’ve got a soft goal of 230,000 words for this year to write, and they’re not going to write themselves because I’m more wary of ChatGPT for fiction than the Bulterian Jihad of Frank Herbert’s Dune universe. At most I might use it as a beta reader for my rough drafts (pretty much what Grammerly or the Microsoft Word grammar editor already does), but if I use it to just write the draft, what’s the point of calling myself a writer, yeah?

The Land, The River, and The Waste (working title due to me being a superstitious sucker) is my top project now, an environmental horror tale set in a little river town on the Mississippi River in Iowa¹. I’ve been trying to get a bit of the small-town feel of my setting, but I have the feeling I need to kick the action into high gear and I have an idea of what I need for it. To raise the stakes, get a dog involved. A bit ruthless, but I think it’s appropriate under the circumstances.

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.

1. To bump up the numbers this week, I might decide to do that big post about all of the works in progress currently in my document queue. As a matter of fact, I might start putting that together as soon as I finish up this piece. ↩︎