January 2012: Progress Report

I'm putting this up for my own benefit, so feel free to skip reading this unless the minutia of my work is interesting to you.

By the end of January I had...

... knocked out only 9 solid days of work on my novels and 45,000 words of my 1,000,000 word goal.

To give myself some perspective, I was unable to start my writing schedule until January 9th and I battled with my Credit Union and several other people I make payments every month to get my cost of living down. The time was well spent, the household will be much cheaper, about 30% less per month, to maintain financially hereafter. I was also still contributing to Master & Student, which as I write this, should go to certification pretty soon.

This is about 40,000 words less or 8 work days shy of the minimum I needed for this month.

Looking ahead...

February:

There are 21 good workdays in February that will garner me 105,000 words if I stay consistent landing me at the 150,000 word mark. That's 17,000 words shy of where I need to be. There are only two saturdays in February where I could possibly get some extra writing in bringing me to 160,000 if I really push.

March:

I have to travel in March for a few days, costing me two work days depending on whether I can get any work done on the road. I usually can, but I'm not going to count it until that actually happens. That leaves me with 20 good work days that I can use to add 100,000 words to my word count and two saturdays I could possibly squeak out another 10,000 words if I want to push.

If everything goes well, and I push I could be at the 270,000 word mark by the end of March being 20,000 words, or four work days ahead of the curve. That assumes I work 4 precious Saturdays to that end.

Conclusion:

It's going to take two full months to recover from a shaky start. There have already been a couple of days where I was able to hit 5800 words, slightly more than I usually write but it generally cuts into the time I spend doing research and outlining. Trying to push beyond 5k words a day is probably not worth it for that reason, I really need that time to prep and edit. I just need to be patient, slow and steady to the finish line.