i'm not entirely sure the last few months actually existed

So, back in July (wow, time ran away!) I had a goal of writing 14k words/week, and aside from the one week I called, I did in fact do that. Actually, I wrote a smack total of 46k words in July, which is still absolutely fantastic and I'm really proud of myself. I then continued on with a 15k words/week goal for August---I failed.

I ran smack into the wall, LOL. So, in August I managed to write 15k words/week for 2 weeks in a row, and then I could no longer maintain that pace. The first Sunday I had to write 7.3k words in order to succeed, which I did do, and the second Sunday I needed 7.9k words, which I also succeeded at (and set a new daily record). The third Sunday I needed another 8k words, and I only got 4k words.

Upon this failure, I continued the rest of August with no weekly goal. Despite this, I still ended up writing 49k words in August, so I'm not exactly disappointed or anything. :)

In September, I wrote 26k words, and had no weekly goal. I am a bit disappointed at that, but I did succeed in getting my year-to-date word-count to 400k words, which is absolutely baffling. Next on the docket, get my YTD wc to 420k words; then I'll have written twice as much this year as last year! That would be awesome.

＼(≧▽≦)／

In October, I'm returning to a weekly goal because I've been feeling kind of adrift. The benefit of a weekly goal is that I know exactly how much time I'm going to write that week, and can plan around it accordingly, and as such it's easier to get done. And it makes me feel more secure, more like I Know What's Coming(TM) in the next week. It's a very nice feeling.

My weekly goal for now is going to be 12k words/week. That feels solidly in the realm of possible; I would say I started overstretching myself at 14k words/week, and 13k words was a bit more effort but still comfortable, so I would like to get back to that after/near the end of October, and then hopefully I can keep that pace up for the rest of the year. I might push the envelope up to 13.5k words if that's something that seems doable later on, but I won't go higher than that in 2024.

My initial plan when I started this slow exercise to increase my weekly writing output was, when I reached 10k words/week, to hold at that level for like three months or so. I obviously didn't up doing that; it felt like I could continue so I did. Honestly, my secret goal the whole time was to be able to write 15k words in a week; and I have done that now! Twice! That's super, super cool and I'm incredibly pleased. But having done that, I don't think it's wise to rush back to that; I was probably onto something when I initially thought I'd be sticking longer to the higher weekly goals before moving on.

Hence why I don't intend to keep climbing for the rest of 2024; rather, I'm going to try acclimatizing to a 12k-13.5k words/week strain and hope my writing muscles can adapt to that without breaking, and then we'll see how that works and what I'm doing in 2025.

...In other but related news, I also joined ferunwrimo in September and had a lot of fun with it; I like climbing leaderboards!

In terms of getyourwordsout, I think I'm still a few thousand words ahead of my pledge, and that's also incredibly fun. This is not at all how I thought a 500k word pledge would go :DDD