Here we are, and it's January 28th. That's four weeks of January. Where am I at now? Well, here's the chart for January so far:
I don't know about you, but if you ask me, that looks pretty awesome. I've stuck with my goal of 1,250 almost every day for the whole month. Only once getting forgetful and quitting 110 words early and once ending my entire book and quitting 230 words early because of that. My overrun on the many days that went way above 1,250 made it so those two very small mishaps don't matter at all.
My total for the month so far is all the way up at 37,209. Where does that put me on my quest to beat last months all-time best total for a month? Let's see the meter!
97.8% of the way! That's pretty much there. In fact, with my daily goal of 1,250, I am only one day from eclipsing it. I will hit the monthly goal tomorrow unless I hit a bus or something instead and am incapacitated.
That's pretty great, too, because it's not a measly goal. In November, my goal was just 15,000. Which was what I would have gotten if I hit exactly 500 words every day of the month. In December, I picked 30,000 which, again, was what I would have gotten if I'd hit exactly 1,000 words each day. I would have to have failed several times to not get to those goals. I didn't even have to stretch to achieve them.
This month, I picked my all time record high total for a single month, and set that as my goal to beat. That would obviously require a stretch to achieve. I've never gotten more in a month, but I was determined to do so, and now I'm on the doorstep. With three more days of 1,250 a day, I should get almost 41,000 words for the month. That may be a record that stands for a while.
So, with the month going that well, how is the year so far?
There's the rest of the months beyond January. Add those all up and looky there what I got! That's right! Just yesterday, I crossed over into six figures. I am officially 100,000 words into this process. I think that means that I am 1/3 of the way there. In what amounts to three months, I've managed to write four months worth of words. That's pretty great. I'm really stoked. If I keep this up, I might reach something like 400,000 words in one year.
Let's see the year-to-date meter.
There it is, 33.56% that's more than 33.34%, which is the one third mark. It's really coming along.
So, I am still writing on "The Elephant in the Room." The story that I originally thought would be a short story has now crossed over the line into novella territory, leaving novelette behind in the dust. I think it's getting close to the finish, but not that close. I don't know. I'm not really sure just how much more story there is to tell. I've got an idea of how I want it to end, but I don't know how many more steps there are along the way to get there. There's several things that I think need to happen before I'm done, so I might be able to go another whole week on the story, but probably not much more than that.
After that, comes that sketchy time where I have to figure out just what comes next. I've got to get a thousand words written. What am I going to write them on? Well, there's a few things I've been thinking of, so I may jump on them. For example, I mentioned last time I was in this situation that there was an idea that I got in a dream back in 2002 or so. I told it to Rish on the day he came up from L.A. to visit me in Sacramento, and I've mentioned it so many times since then that it's become comical. I can't find the outline I did for it years ago, and neither can Rish, so I'd have to start over from the drawing board, but that would be fine, I suppose. I'd like to do that idea so that I could cross it off my list, and stop thinking about it. It's been more than twenty years now, after all.
We'll see. I guess I'll see what I can do. Maybe I can look around some more and see if I can't find that old outline. Maybe on my old computer...
Of course, for now, I've got to finish what I'm working on. That won't happen before January comes to a close. That's only three days away. I'll be back with an update on the entire month when that happens, so I'll see you then.
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