Week Three Of January

It's been three weeks now in January, how am I doing? Am I still going? Well, here's my chart:

My goal for this month is 1,250 words per day, and this week, I've managed to hit that every single day, even though one of the days I only got eight words over. It's been a little bit difficult this week, because I started a new story on Monday. I didn't have the entire thing planned out or anything, so a lot of it has been winging it. That's probably the main reason I was happy to stop at 1,258 on Monday. 

When you write 1,250 every day, though, you make really good progress. I was talking to Rish on the phone today, and I told him my story had reached almost 10,000 words already (9,482 to be exact), he cursed me for getting so much done. Considering that Rish has always out-produced me it feels good to get that hate from him.

So, I managed to keep with my new augmented goal every day this week...and that's the first time now that I've hit it every day. Last week I only managed 1,022 words on Sunday, because I finished my book and wasn't prepared to start something new, and two weeks ago, I only made it to 1,140 once, because I forgot that I hadn't finished all the way, and went to bed without writing another 110 words. This week, no snafus. I just stuck with it every night until I was done.

I have been a little lazy, letting my words wait until late in the day before I finish them, which could wind up biting me in the end, but it hasn't so far, so I guess I'm doing okay.

Now, how am I doing toward my goal for the month? What is my goal for the month? Well, last month, I hit my all-time record word count for a single month, 38,046, and I wanted to top that, so I made my goal 38,047. What's my percentage so far?

27761 / 38046 (72.97%)

Three weeks in, and I'm 72.91% of the way there. Is that good?  It sure is, because we're only 67.74% of the way through the month. So I'm a full five percent ahead of the pace. If I keep this up, I should beat that one month record.

How's my progress toward the year goal? Here's my chart for the rest of the time with my total word count in the green box:

So, after two full months, four days of October, and the first three weeks of January, I'm at 92,720 words. That's pretty exciting. I'm closing in on 100,000. In fact, if I keep up my pace this week, I'll cross that line before I return for my next report. That's sweet.

My average for the month is all the way up at 1,322, which is the highest it's been so far, and is well above my goal of 1,250 per day, so that's going well.

What is my percentage toward my final goal?

92720 / 304475 (30.45%)

30% of the way there. We are only 23.5% of the way through the year so far, so I am cruising way ahead of the pace on the yearly goal. That's pretty sweet too. 

All in all it's going well. I managed to transition from the end of one story to the beginning of another story this week without too much of a problem, so that was good. That's always been the hardest part of this whole thing. If I have to write every day, what do I do if I don't have something to start into? I may not manage to get my words. It's a pretty dicey time, filled with anxiety, until I get into another story. So getting past that this week was really nice. 

Unfortunately, I'm almost already to the point where I'll need to do that again. This story probably isn't going to be a really, really long one like the last thing I wrote. That was a whole book. This will not be. It's actually already grown to be much larger than I thought it would be at all, though, so who knows. I'm not sure how long I might stretch it out. I can't say since I'm pantsing my way through it. I guess we'll see. I'll tell you what's happened in my next report. See you then.