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.

---

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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.

---

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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.

---

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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.

---

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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.

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.

---

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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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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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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1. ↩︎

Look up “doldrums” and you’ll get the reason I went with the featured photo with this story. That’s how I feel about how much I’ve been writing recently.

Here’s the stats for last week:

Writing statistics for the week ending 18 October 2025:
Words: 3,224
Days writing: 5 of 7.
Days revising or planning: 2 of 7 for 240 minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 6 of 7 days.

I mentioned last week that I’ve been obsessed with this idea of basing 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 now have the rough outline done. I’ve gone far enough to set up a file for it, but I haven’t started writing yet.

It’s irritating because I feel like there’s other projects I’m compelled to do, but it’s this one book that calling me to write it. This book seems to be the one which seems to be connecting not just with the issues rattling around in my head, but the home I’ve lived in for so long. It’s like the universe is calling on me to do this, even though I also have other projects to do.

My goal for this year was 225,000 words written for 2025, either fiction or nonfiction. Part of me doesn’t want to check how far off pace I am at the moment, even though I’m sure the numbers would have impressed me three or four years ago. All I can do is to try and bust this rut, one way or another.

That’s it. Take care, everyone.

---

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I thought I would need a big long explanation for why my raw word count was garbage again, but I thought the meme pic I used as the featured photo for this post covered the basics.

Here’s the stats for last week:

Writing statistics for the week ending 11 October 2025:
Words: 3,468
Days writing: 5 of 7.
Days revising or planning: 3 of 7 for 360 minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 6 of 7 days.

Basically, I got distracted with ideas for this new writing world, a reimagining of the towns I’ve lived in for more than forty years of my life along the Mississippi River. I’ve been talking with people at book shows and pitching them the idea, and they dig it. It’s like the universe is calling on me to do this, but I also have other projects to do.

My goal for this year was 225,000 words written for 2025, either fiction or nonfiction¹. Soon, I’m going to have to estimate what pace I’m going to have to hit to make that mark.

Most of the non-blogging writing I’ve been doing has centered on the next book in the The Yank Striker series. I’m close to a rough outline on the sci-fi horror project in the river town I mentioned above.

That’s it. Take care, everyone.

---

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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1. ↩︎

I thought I had a better week this week than the previous week. I did. I hoped I would have a better month than I did after a horrible August, and I managed to beat it by a little more than 3,000 words. But that doesn’t mean I’m not behind the pace and it doesn’t mean I have a lot of work to do to meet my productivity goals for the year.

Here’s the stats for last week and last month as well:

Writing statistics for the week ending 4 October 2025:
Words: 4,947
Days writing: 7 of 7.
Days revising or planning: 1 of 7 for 180 minutes.
Daily Writing Goals Met (500+ words or 30 minutes of planning/revisions): 5 of 7 days.

Writing statistics for September 2025:
Words: 15,559
Revising/planning: 71%

Again, these were better numbers than last week and the previous month, but…

My goal for this year was 225,000 words written for 2025, either fiction or nonfiction¹. As of the end of September, I have 165,272 words written. Unfortunately, if I was keeping up with the pace I needed to, I should have at least 168,750. So, that’s a little more than 3,000 words.

I might be able to catch up this month. If I keep writing when I don’t want to, if I stick to my guns. It’s not impossible… and October is a bit of a long month. But, I have to keep going.

Most of the non-blogging writing I’ve been doing has centered on the next book in the The Yank Striker series. I’ve continued to outline and plan a sci-fi horror project in a town something like what I grew up in. If I keep it up, I might have a rough outline on my hands soon.

That’s it. Take care of yourselves.

---

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1. In case you were wondering, I do not count the words of what I write for my daytime job (teaching) and I do not count the words in any social media posts I make. ↩︎