We're a third of the way through September, more or less. That's the big month where I take the final step from writing every day in July to writing 500 words every day in August to writing the full 1,000 words every day in September.
I was a little worried about it, to be honest, because in July, I only managed 1,000 words four times. In August, I only managed it seven times.
Today is the twelfth of September. Meaning that, if I have succeeded, then yesterday was the day that I doubled the amount of 1,000 word days for the entire rest of the year. I had to achieve in 11 days what had taken 62 days to achieve before. Was that something I was going to be capable of?
Well, it turns out that, yes, I can do it. I did just fine. Here's where I am so far.
Interesting to think that I've almost reached my first month's total, but in so short a time. Weird thing was that it was pretty easy. I guess that having a goal to shoot for makes it simpler to reach. I checked my word count, and if I wasn't there, I kept going. Eventually I made it.
Some days were harder than others, but I don't feel like I accomplished some monumental task or anything. Before the month began, I was feeling like it might be just that.
So, where am I at for my monthly goal of 30,000 words?
I'm at 41%, which is several percentages ahead of where I have to be. Of course, as long as I make it to my goal each day, I will nail it. Any overages are gravy, and the way writing is, it's pretty much impossible not to get overages.
What about my year goal? How close am I to getting to 304,475?
18% of the way there, or basically 1/6 of the way there. I have to keep up this new faster pace for the rest of the year, basically to make it to my goal. My present average pace of 755 words per day wouldn't be enough to achieve my goal for the year. I would only get to 275,575. 1,000 words a day from here on out would make me achieve my goal easily, so that's what I'm shooting for.
Actually, that's not totally true. If that was what I was shooting for, I wouldn't have bothered to buy this book by Chris Fox:
He also recommends this other book that I may check out:
It would be pretty awesome to be able to write a lot more words each day. If I write 1,000 words a day, I could finish a 90,000 word novel in three months. If I could write more, like say 3,000 words a day, I could do it in one month instead. Imagine how great that would be.
The guy who wrote that first book, Chris Fox, has a YouTube channel where he has done several novel writing challenges that make NaNoWriMo look like child's play. He's done, for example, a fifteen day novel writing challenge, and he's succeeded, then gone on to sell that novel to many people, and has made sequels to it as well.
So, I want to actually go above and beyond the 1,000 words a day limit. In fact, right here and now, I will commit to doing NaNoWriMo this year in November. That is 1,666 words a day, to reach 50,000 in one month. So, that will be a big step up in just a few months. Not sure what I'll do next month, but it might be some amount in between 1,000 and 1,666 per day.
How will I ever do such a thing? Well, one of the tricks that I have been wanting to implement for a while, and Chris Fox suggested, is dictating some of your words.
I've started doing that each morning when I go out and walk around the greenbelt trail. The first day, I got over 500 words. The second day, only 366. The third day was closer to 250, but then the fourth day I was all the way up over 500 again. This morning?
394 words by 8:45. Having that many words in the bag before 9:00 AM makes hitting 1,000 much easier, but what I really ought to do is start zeroing out my count after the walk, and considering whatever I wrote on the walk to be gravy, something I add on to my 1,000 word total at the end of the day. Then I could be hitting 1,500 words a day frequently.
Now, my daily walk is not the only time I have that is wasted with a task that doesn't require my full mental energy. On weekdays, I have a commute that lasts 45 minutes each way. That's 90 daily minutes of brain free time that I could also dedicate to dictating books.
Add that to my approximately one hour walk, and I have two and a half hours of useless time that could become writing time. I don't expect dictation to ever reach the levels of concentrated writing that I do at a keyboard, but I am absolutely certain that in that time, I could do at least 1,000 words a day. I could hit my goal every day without ever writing at a keyboard, but if I added keyboard time as well, then bam! The sky's the limit.
I could take my word count up to 2,000 a day, maybe more. Then there's all the suggestions that Chris Fox had in his book. I'm going to start trying to implement those, and see what kind of improvement I can reach. 3,00 a day? 4,000 a day? 5,000 a day? Or even 5,000 an hour like the book is called? Who knows, but I'm willing to give it my all to improve.
For now, I'm going to keep writing on my walks every day, and keep hitting 1,000 a day. I'll give it this month, and then I'll step it up in October, before getting to NaNoWriMo in November. But I really do think the sky's the limit.
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