I’ve written 128,680 words so far this year. Considering my goal was to write 200,000 words total by the end of the year, I would say that’s pretty impressive. Needless to say, I bumped my goal up to 300,000 and added a new little line on my insane spreadsheet that tells me what I’m currently on pace to hit if I stick to my current average words per day. It’s currently projecting that I’ll finish the year with well over 400k so I think the likelihood of my upping the goal again is high.
At first I was like woohoo, I’m ahead!
…but then I upped the goal.
(Actually, I’m still ahead with the 300,000 word goal. I’m just less ahead.)
I signed up for Camp NaNoWriMo this month because I needed a deadline to get me to finish this never ending book project I’ll blog about in another post. I wasn’t hopeful that I’d really be able to hit 50k outside of November NaNoWriMo because I’ve never actually done it before but it’s day 23 and I have 37,516 words at the moment so it certainly wasn’t a total failure, whatever happens these next few days. Even if I don’t hit 50k, I’ve already written more this month than I have any other month this year so it’s an all around win. But I’m in it to win, as always.
The wild thing is that I’m averaging 1,149 words a day for the year when my original goal was just about 500 words a day. I’m blown away by this because, in the past, whenever I set a goal of 1,000 words a day or more, I really struggled to keep up with it and here I am, hitting it when I didn’t even plan to. While I can’t say this year’s been easy by any stretch of the imagination, I’m getting it done and I don’t feel like I’m going any more insane than usual to do it. I don’t want to pat myself on the back too much, especially since there’s plenty of year left for me to crash and burn, but I’m really quite pleased at how this writing year is going.
I’ve also gotten a lot done, as in projects finished and things in motion. I wish I could be more specific on that but hopefully I’ll have some info to share with you soon. But that’s the other really crazy thing about this year. I’m not just getting more done, I’m getting more “real” stuff done and finishing projects instead of just writing fluff like blog posts. I know that was my entire goal in creating the new system but I’m just amazed to see that it’s actually working.
Really, the only thing that’s got me worried right now is the fact that I’ve been concentrating a ton on only this one project to get it finished once and for all and, since it’s non-fiction, that means I’m going to be writing almost nothing but prose and playwriting for a while to get my 1/3 balance back the way I want it. Being able to switch back and forth between genres willy nilly is one of the best parts of my new system and not being able to do it is slowing me down a bit. But just getting this project done at last will be such a huge weight off, I think it’s worth it.
Lastly, I’m especially glad I’ve made the progress I’ve made because I’m TIRED darn it. I’m getting very little sleep, burning the candle on both ends and feeling a bit overstretched so that fact that, at least according to the numbers, I’m doing just fine is just really nice right about now. There’s a lot of year left and a lot more I want to accomplish before the end but I feel like I’m heading in the right direction and that’s enough to make it feel like I’m winning at least a little bit.
But now I have to go to bed. The little one… she wakes up very early and there is no snoozing that alarm clock. 😉
Hillary DePiano is a playwright, fiction and non-fiction writer who loves writing of all kinds except for writing bios like this.
