november sure was a month that existed, huh

[quillpunk]

I said I'd write 6k words every week in November and darn it, I did! XD

All in all, I wrote just above 26k words in November, the highest monthly wordcount in quite awhile. My new wordcount tracking spreadsheet is still awesome, and I absolutely adore it. Somehow, I actually like the fact that nothing's automatic? That I have to type in the calculations manually? It makes my progress seem a little bit more real than if the spreadsheet just did all that for me (I've tried that before!), and it's a pretty cool feeling. Also, I just really like the visual design I made :D

Ultimately, I'm insanely pleased with November's writing. Not gonna lie, I thought 6k words a week would be difficult, because it sounds like a lot, you know. But it's not only perfectly doable for me, it... well, it kind of felt pretty easy. Maybe even a bit easier than 5k words/week, somehow?

Anyway, succeeding means I'm moving on to 7k words a week in December! That's very cool! And also now I'm terrified, mostly because I know what the daily average is on that.

Like, I think part of what's working here is that I'm not worrying about the day-to-day wordcount. I don't know what the daily average on 6k words a week is, and I didn't know what it was for 5k a week either. I like not knowing. It means I don't have to worry about it.

My strategy has been just writing as I feel until Fridays, not worrying about my progress (even though I am tracking it!) and not angsting about anything. Then, on Fridays, I actually do the math to figure out how much is left, and if I need to speed up my writing, I buckle down as needed. Just so I'm not left holding the bag on Sundays, needing to write 5k words or whatever, LOL.

So far this strategy has been out!

I am really excited to do 7k words a week, though. Last week was the first time since I started this experiment where I hit my goal on Saturday (I've been hitting them on Sundays all the time), and because I'm not allowing myself to go above my goal, I was honestly feeling a bit bereft on Sunday. A bit "well, what am I supposed to do now, then?"

I wanted to keep writing, but the point of this exercise is to not overextend myself and part of that means stopping once I hit my goal. I want to slowly, consistently raise my weekly wordcount output and I wanna do it without straining myself or burning out. That's why I'm doing the same goal every week for a month; to get used to it and ensure it's actually a pace I can realistically keep up.

Even when I'm sick (November wasn't fun) I can apparently still write 6k words in a week.

It's nice to have that confirmation, even if it means the increase in wordcount is so slow all this sometimes feels a bit silly. But I'm happy with my progress so far, and I am ready for more. (pumps fist)

That said, my NaNoWriMo project ended up at only 4k words of my actual 15k goal. I succeeded a bit too well at resisting the NaNo hype, to the point I got a bit over it, actually. I tipped too far to the other side and ended up not being very enthusiastic about it at all. (That's the nice way of putting it, LOL.)

I don't know, I just feel very strongly that the mentality of "if I can't jump from normally writing 20k words a month to suddenly writing 50k words in a single month, I've lost" is kind of weird :(

Anyway, despite dropping the ball on my NaNo project, I kept the rest spinning through the air.

I'm pretty darn pleased! XD

Comments

[vriddy]

Congratulations on meeting your goal!! Not just having a minimum but also forcing yourself to stop when you've met your weekly goal is super intriguing. I can see how it would force one to keep things sustainable. Really cool to think about and best of luck with the coming month as well!

[quillpunk]

thank you! yeah, stopping when i hit my goal is an experiment i've never tried before but so far i like it :D it does force me to stop instead of pushing onward just because i technically feel like i could in the moment, and it is pretty nice. eager to find out how this will go, lol

[spacedogfromspace]

Congrats on hitting your goal! Also it's cool that you have a spreadsheet without formulas but man, I mess up too much to do that (I made my spreadsheet specifically to do the math for me because I screw up too much)
xD

[quillpunk]

thank you! yeah spreadsheets are so cool :D (but actually it's still doing the math for me, it just doesn't do it automatically; i just have to make it subtract for me *pumps fist* and i can do that formula manually every time and it tricks my brain into thinking it's more 'real' than if the spreadsheet just auto calculated all that stuff every time i filled something in)

[spacedogfromspace]

Nice! I have a physical log book that I use so that's where all the satisfying tracking and stats happens. The spreadsheet double checks my math! xD

[quillpunk]

A physical logbook sounds very cool. Alas, I would forget it everywhere, LOL.

[spacedogfromspace]

lol yeah mine is basically chained to my desk for this reason

[quillpunk]

a solid solution

[mistressofmuses]

Congratulations! That's a lot of words, and it's great that it was such a sustainable pace! I hope that 7k per week goes just as well!

[quillpunk]

thank you! it is so many words, and i am kind of baffled that it worked :D but very pumped for december! (there are so many things i wanna write right now XD)

[mistressofmuses]

Wanting to write lots of things is a good position to be in! As is being excited for the month!

[quillpunk]

XD