It's the first of the month. The first of the month after the first full month. I made the goal to write another 300,000 words this year...not this calendar year, because I started in July...does that make it the fiscal year then? I've never been able to figure out fiscal years. When do they start? When do they end? Are they the same for every company and government agency? Or do they change from one place to another? Who cares?
So, from July 1st, 2022 to June 30th, 2023, I'm going to write 300,000 words...in fact, it will be 304,475, because I have to best my total from 2019-2020, when I last pledged to make it to 300,000 words.
Truthfully, I expect to beat it by a lot, because I'm not going to quit. Last time around, right after I hit my goal in late August with two full months still to go, I thought that I'd take a little break to decompress after nearly a year of non-stop writing. That little break turned out to last almost two full years. I've learned my lesson. If you have a good thing going, don't let it go. Never give it up. Hold on tight and keep it with you always, because it's way too easy to lose it and way too hard to get it going again.
So, I'm going to compare my first months of 2019-2020 to my first month of 2022. Here's months one and two of 2019.
And here is my first month of 2022.
My goal for this first month was just to get into the swing of writing every day. I didn't have to hit any certain word count goal. I was just trying to get used to thinking of myself as a writer again, and doing what writers do, which is writing every day.
That was the same goal for the tail end of October/month of November in 2019. If you look at the two charts, the word counts aren't significantly different in size, but in 2019 there were eight days that I missed writing altogether. This year, I didn't miss a single day. Somehow, I managed to remember every single day that I am a writer, despite it being a relatively crazy month where we were remodeling our house in various ways, and I had to do a decent amount of work on that.
In July, I also did a lot of other things with my spare time beyond writing. I restarted my YouTube toy channel, did weekly videos for the BBBE Challenge that Marshal and I are doing, prepared a couple of podcasts for upcoming release, started getting books ready for publishing, and wrote a bunch of blog posts on top of all of that. I feel like I've been pretty damn productive for the first time in a really long time.
So, how did the first month of writing go? Well, as I already mentioned, I never missed a day, even though I did come really close once. There were many days that my word count was pretty piddly, barely 300 words, and even as low as 225. But it was never zero, and I'm really proud of that.
On top of that, my average word count for the month was 565. In 2019, my average for the same month was 385, so I'm already miles ahead of that.
As I was going along through the month, and I watched my total grow, I really got the desire to outdo the monthly total of month one from 2019, when I was doing the same goal of just getting into the groove. 2019 was 11,545. I thought I could definitely beat that.
Then I noticed that month two of 2019, when I had the goal of 500 words per day had been pretty lackluster, only reaching 12,574. I decided that I needed to beat that as well, and thought that I probably could (of course, my dad died on the Dec. 10th, 2019, which explains the zeros for nine days in a row on that chart. I had other things on my mind and other things to deal with, hence the low total).
I pushed for it, and easily eclipsed both of those totals, getting 17,540 on the month. That beat 2019 month one by almost a full 6,000 words, and beat 2019 month two by nearly 5,000. It leaves me pretty pleased with my first month, my July, and pretty excited about August.
Now, in August, the bar is raised. I can't get away with 225 or even 300 anymore. In month two, the goal is 500 words per day. So, if I'm not feeling it, and I just want to bail after a few listless minutes and only 225 words, I'll have to buck up and put my nose to the grindstone. I'll have to keep going. I remember what it was like back in 2019 and 2020, each time I would click the word count button, and find that I still had work to do. I haven't had to do that yet this year, but I do now.
Time to roll up the sleeves. I think I'm ready, though. The past month has gotten me prepared. 500 words a day times 31 days makes 15,500 words. That's two thousand less than what I achieved without a daily goal last month, so for this upcoming month, I'm going to set myself a goal of 20,000 for the month. And, of course, there is the year goal of 304,475. Gotta beat all of those.
What's my progress for the year so far?
A little over 5%. That kind of sounds bad, considering that one month is 8.33% of a year, but I'm not in the least bit worried. September I will bump my goal up to 1,000 words a day, and it will stay there for the rest of the year. I cover a lot of ground when I'm writing 1,000 words a day. I'm pretty bullish on my chances of beating my goal.
As far as it goes, I am 17,211 into a book that I was originally calling Ankletown Station. I couldn't keep that name, however, so I took Marshal Latham's suggestion and changed it from Ankletown to Sallis. Can't decide if I should keep the name station or if I should change it to junction which is a more apt description of the place. Sallis Station just sounds better than Sallis Junction though. The alliteration gives more of a ring to it. We'll see.
17,211 words puts me in chapter four, and I'm having fun making my way through the story. I'm developing an idea of where it's going, but still have plenty to fill in each day as I write. It's pretty fun stuff. Can't wait to share it with y'all.
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