Word goals for December

Awhile back, Patrick Thunstrom made me a spreadsheet for writing progress. It's quite handy but only goes so far for me, because I tend to write a draft and rewrite it about twenty-five times (which is why Saturnine isn't out yet).

But I decided to dust off an outline of an old project I never finished, update the outline, and try to get 30,000 words written in a month. The results:

The left column is word count, bottom column is number of days. It's an 80-day chart, so look at the left corner. From this graph you can deduce two things:
1) I obviously messed something up when copying it to Paint, because it's blurry.
2) I did well early on but veered off course as time got closer to the holidays. I started on December 3rd, so the 21st day is Christmas Eve.

So this is some evidence that I actually can still write, I just need to keep focused and take breaks from time to time for real-world stuff. Awhile back I did a social media scaleback, and I'm going to attempt a social media comeback. Tweeting, blogging, and the like do take time and effort, but they help bring me into a writing frame of mind.

Oh, can I add New Year's Resolutions to this post? Release three books in 2014. Expect more wibbly-wobbly charts in the future, but I'll try my best to get my words out there.

Thoughts on (not) finishing NaNoWriMo

This year, I decided to try NaNoWriMo. I did it unofficially (I didn't even sign up at the website). I've never been able to successfully complete it, so I only wanted to see how far I could get.

November is historically a bad month for me, writing-wise. It's usually filled with a lot of school projects (And while I thought I'd be done with college at age 22 or 23, I keep going back for more). It has that late holiday, and is filled with a lot of birthday parties - which is a good thing for having fun, and not such a good thing for writing.

Adding to my stress this month were Real Life Issues at the place we're living ... oh, and the fact that I started working at a new job recently.

So really, I should've known I was lost from the start.

I finally realized that what I'm writing isn't a novel; it's more of a novella or even a long short story. And that's okay. I can finish it up without worrying about it being 50k and go back to working on other stuff.

I have a spreadsheet (made by the brilliant Pat) to set my own goals. Maybe ROW (round of words) is better for me, as it's more flexible. And I'm amazed at everyone who has the dedication and drive to finish NaNoWriMo--maybe next year, with a bit more preparation, I'll be one of them.

Updates

Okay, I just realized I haven't posted for a year, so my social media scaleback went on a lot longer than intended. I put Saturnine on hold for a bit for other projects, and have been writing a bit but haven't finished anything major. I also realized that the comment section got attacked by bots, so I'm requiring that everyone who posts have an open ID (bloggers should have this, but if you have problems, message me on Twitter).