All-Time Chart

I've been thinking about doing this for a while, but I always found better things to do. I should have kept it that way, but the other day, instead of doing worthwhile work, I spent hours compiling an all-time word count chart.  

It looked something like this:

Back in 2011, for the month of September, I pledged to write 500 words a day for the first time. While not achieving it perfectly, I did manage to at least keep up with it and I averaged 500 words a day.

I remember feeling really good about myself when it was over, and being really upset with myself later when I let it slip away and failed to make it a habit. Over the years of talking about wanting to be a writer, I held onto that success in my memory, and eventually, I started trying to reenact it.

The next time I put it to work was in February of 2017. Rish jumped in with me, and we both started developing some good habits. I upped my goal to 1,000 words a day in March, kept it going through April and a little bit into May. I was having my best year of writing ever. Then we moved, and I let circumstances get in the way and it slipped off, but the seeds had been planted. 

I flailed about, sometimes writing and sometimes doing nothing for while before once again, getting the daily word limit goal applied in October of 2019. I really caught on in 2020, and made that best year ever of 2017 look utterly insignificant. I still didn't quite have a handle on it, though, because I quit when I hit my goal, and couldn't manage to pick the torch back up.

This past October was the time when I feel like I made it happen for real. It's a lifelong habit now, I think. Not only that, but all of this progress has made it easier, and given me a lot of confidence. I think I'm getting pretty good at this.

So, back to the purpose of all of this. I've been tracking my word progress for a long time in one way or another. So, I decided to compile it all into one place. I made a section for every year that I have any idea of how many words I wrote. Many of them were just  that I'd written a story during that year, so I took its word count and added it to the bunch. Others was taking the charts that I'd made for the year and compiling them.

I suspect that to most people it would be totally lame, but for me it's kind of a visual representation of my progress that makes me smile. 

Another thing that I did that I find super interesting was to take all the stories that I've written, and label the dates that I worked on them. That's a bit of a walk down memory lane for me with each of them.

The most interesting part of all is the chart that compares the totals from each year and adds them up into a cumulative total. Check this out:

That is an interesting string of numbers to me. You can see the increase...it's bumpy, but it does keep going up. There were some really bad years, when I got as many words for the whole year as I get in a week now...then again, there's many years that are skipped altogether, because I didn't write a damned thing. 

Then there's that last number: 1,227,188. That's right, folks. I'm a damned millionaire...at least when it comes to words. I have a million of those to my name. A lot of people say that you have to write a million words of crap before you become a good writer, so I guess I've finally arrived at that level. Of course, that means that all the stuff I've been sharing with you for all these years is crap, so I don't know if I subscribe to that theory. I think even some of my old stuff is pretty good.

My goal for 2025 should thrust me above 1.5 million.  It neat to think about...at least for me. Y'all probably stopped reading a while ago, if you ever even clicked on the link in the first place, but at the very least, it gives me energy and excitement to keep at it. So, I guess I will.