Fiction writer. Expert procrastinator. This is my life.
I’m not going to try today to break my newest one-day word count record. I will try instead to just end the 2015 year on a day where I wrote a reasonable number of words and start 2016 off by doing the same again tomorrow.
So, next two days’ goals are simple: write 4,558 words each day.
Now I have to get off the WIFI and get started, so I’ll be back later with details. :D
I didn’t think December would make it, not with how quickly sales slowed down toward the end of the month, but it does now appear that December has become my best earning month to date for my self-publishing business (highest revenue and most units sold). The numbers are preliminary and do not include my international sales because I don’t know what they’ll come to once currency conversion happens.
If I had wanted to make this claim a few days ago, I could have, but I wanted it solid, with U.S. dollars. Now it is. :)
This is one reason I’m trying so hard to write more books in the coming year. I’m very close to a milestone earnings number and I would like to reach it within the next six months.
Currently, I earn a modest full-time living off sales of my fiction.
I want more. :D
I ended the day with 1,467 words, and that’s only because I pushed myself to get started again despite really not wanting to. The story was boring me! That’s what I ultimately decided, so I’ve tried to pep it up with some really crazy detours. I can’t stand being bored and I can’t write when I’m bored with a story.
I’m doing better today, so maybe it worked to get me interested again. :)
Now I just have to figure out how to get my main characters together again instead of off doing their own things. I don’t like story lines where my main characters are split up for long stretches of time.
Anyway, updates later on today’s progress (new post probably), because this was really just a follow up post regarding yesterday’s goal.
I’m hoping for a successful return to work today. This isn’t January 1, but it’s the beginning of the new year to me, and I want to start off strong. My plan is to aim for 4,558 words on every day that I’m supposed to be writing. That’s most days.
Here’s my schedule of days off for the next 12 months.
Holidays – 4 days a year
Unexpected – 12 (sick days mostly)
Vacation – 14
Occasional weekend – 48 (that’s 4 days a month)
Total days off – 78
Total working days – 287
Publishing days – 36 (3 days each month I won’t be writing)
Writing days – 251 (21 approx writing days each month)
Some months will have more, some months should have less, because of the fall of holidays, sickness, vacation time, and weekend days, but overall, I’m aiming for 95,333 words each month, and that’s what I’ll push for each month.
This works for me because I don’t have a lot of leisure activities I like as much as I like writing, and I cannot stand telling myself I can’t write because someone else thinks I should be doing something besides “working” (yet I have a history of taking way too much time away, but that’s another issue!). And seriously, 21+3=24 work days a month on average, and that’s just a bit more than a regular work week, but not when you take into consideration that I almost never get in 8 hours of work time a day.
I’d say this schedule is very average for number of hours of work each month. The only time I’m really pushing myself is during publishing weeks, and that I have to admit usually has me working 16 hour days. On the other hand, recently, that’s only happened about 4 times a year (definitely happened more when I was just starting out because I spent so much time learning). Going forward, I’ll be trying to cut those days down into more reasonable chunks.
I have never written that many (fiction) words in one month (95,333), but I want January to be the first month I do it. The month has very few holidays (none for which I plan to take time away from writing), and it’s a long month. I’m feeling good about it right now.
So, time to get started. I will post about today’s progress at the end of the day today. My aim is to have 4,558 words finished as early in the day as possible today. I’d aim for a record but I can’t. I have some important things to do, so when I hit 4,558 words, I’m stopping until all those other things are done.
I’ve ended tonight with 3,577 words. I’d really like to make it to my 4,558 words but it’s just not going to happen. I’m tired and I screwed up today not getting my words done earlier. Still, the gift wrapping had to be done!
It was the lunch break and movie that I should have skipped. :o
I’m still not sure how I ended up watching Deep Impact for the umpteenth time. Great movie, but I had a headache when it was over from trying not to cry so much. ;) It’s a tearjerker there at the end and it gets me every time! Anyway, I might have time to write a bit in the morning, but only if I call it a night right now. So… that’s what I’m going to do.
It was a fantastic day for writing, I have to say. I made a great recovery after yesterday’s apparent self-sabotage (I did get 720 words yesterday so it wasn’t a total loss).
| Minutes | Words | Session | WPH |
| 45 | 863 | 863 | 1,151 |
| 45 | 1,713 | 850 | 1,133 |
| 45 | 2,312 | 599 | 799 |
| 45 | 3,452 | 1,140 | 1,520 |
| 45 | 4,241 | 789 | 1,052 |
| 25 | 4,951 | 710 | 1,704 |
| 250 | Total minutes | 4.16667 | Hours completed | |
| 4,951 | Total words | |||
| 1,188 | Total WPH | -0.3307 | Hours to finish | |
The biggest success today was how quickly I did this. Almost every one of my breaks came in under 15 minutes (not all, but most) and I was done by 3:56 pm. :)
One thing I will say, writing faster like this made my forearms hurt. I don’t usually have pain from writing, and I’m not liking this at all. I think I’ll stick to writing more instead of trying to write faster.
I was pushing, today, to finish early enough to go shopping so that anxiety would ease up, and I made it. :) I shopped, and now I’m finally done with that.
Also, I wrapped presents during my breaks—just one or two at a time, but it also helped me get a start on that. Tomorrow I’ll do the same thing and maybe get all the presents wrapped up!
I kind of hate the holidays. I can’t decide if I’m self-sabotaging by not writing or just not dealing well with the anxiety of shopping left undone.
Yeah, you got that right. I still haven’t finished shopping. I’m not even close to being done, and I don’t want to go tonight, and I don’t want to do it tomorrow because I want to write, but that was also what I told myself today, and yet here I am, having not written anything!
I did go on a Star Wars spoiler binge, but only because I need to decide if I’m going to watch it now or after the last movie in this set (trilogy?) comes out. I think I’ve decided. Later. I hate cliffhangers and it sounds as if a lot of stuff is left up in the air at the end of the The Force Awakens. I’d rather just save it and savor them all at once. Plus, if it gets screwed up somewhere in the middle, I don’t have to watch at all.
Anyway, I’m going to have to try to write something, because if I don’t… today will have been a major waste. I’ve really done nothing of note except talk on the telephone for about three hours. Ugh.
I really don’t understand why I’m having such a hard time getting started again, unless it’s just the change in routine caused by the holidays throwing me off. That could be it.
I wish… no, I don’t wish. I’m just going to have to deal with this. There’s no reason I shouldn’t be writing right now.
It’s 5:42 pm. I’ve never started writing so late in the day and successfully written a lot of words. I can’t say what my upper limit is for such a late start, but I’d say it’s in the 2,000–3,000 word range. Definitely not 5,950 words, which is where I’m planning to end today. (Because, confession time, I totally screwed up yesterday too and wrote only the words I got as I made a couple of fixes I needed to make in my book. Or, you know, 318 words.)
I will need to write super fast tonight, much faster than my usual average. I will also need to write freely and not get hung up on anything as I go. Deep breath. I can do that. I’ve written 5,000 words in 6 hours before, so all I need to do is write fast, take super short breaks, and stick with it until I’m done.
No more tea, water, or other drinks at the computer. I take too many breaks when I have them.
I’m doing two quick things and then I’m getting started. I’m going to get this done tonight if I have to stay up half the night. Bad idea, I know, so I’m going to finish before that happens. You can’t see me, but I’m wearing my serious face. :-|
I can do this.
Update: I got started at 6:39 pm. I’m currently at 2,273 words. My pace isn’t anywhere near where I’d like it, but surprisingly it’s actually not bad either at 921 WPH. Normally I’d be thrilled at that pace. It’s 10:11 pm though and I’m not staying up until 2 am, which is how late I’ll need to stay up to write 5,950 at my current pace, so I must get faster because I do not want to stop until I’ve reached that word count! :o
Update (next morning): I reached 2,625 words, and although I called it a night after that, I think this little challenge served its purpose: I wrote more words than I would have if I hadn’t tried it! Today I try again, but this time, I have the time to make this a success. :)
I’m off to a very slow start today with writing, but I do have another chunk of my Christmas shopping done and am feeling a lot of relief about that!
I don’t know if I’ll be able to break a record today, because it’s now 1:02 pm, but I am going to aim to get my 4,558 words done. I’ve decided today is a restart for my 1,144,000 word goal for the next 12 months, and I don’t want to end up behind on my first day back at it.
I’m restarting because playing catch up is nothing but a sure fire way to end up procrastinating the rest of the year away.
Today is the 18th. I still have Christmas shopping to do. I really am a last minute shopper. Unfortunately, I’ve also been unable/unwilling to do the writing I need to do this month too. I have reasons, but I’m not really pleased with myself about them. They’re legitimate, when I think objectively about them, but they don’t feel legitimate. It’s that emotion versus rationality thing. Humans aren’t rational beings, and I am human. ;)
But . . . I’m going to have a few days to myself now, and I’m really hoping I can get back on track.
Today, however, might be a lost cause. I’m hoping to get something written, but I’m running out of steam fast and the night has come much more quickly than I expected. So… I’ll be back tomorrow to get moving on this book and maybe try for a word count record again. See you then. :)
I want to beat my current one-day word count record—and get a few other things done today too. So to help myself stay on task, I’ll be blogging my progress today. :D
Here goes. 10:30 am. I’m getting started with a 50 minute timed session.
Current stats at 12:55 pm:
93 Total minutes
840 Total words
542 Total WPH
1.55 Hours completed
6.860595238 Hours to finish
(I really miss the ability to paste in a table from Excel!)
And here it is 7:14 pm and I haven’t written another word yet. I had to stop for lunch, family was home, I needed a nap, had to Christmas shop, then more Christmas shopping, then thought I could get back to writing but it was meal time again, and finally here I am. Unfortunately, I have to stop at 10 pm at the latest because I have plans tomorrow. I also won’t be likely to get any writing done, and I am fighting a serious case of “I’m ready to give up and just try this again on Thursday instead of fighting today and tomorrow to get going again” but I’m not going to let that attitude win.
I’m going to get back to writing until 10 pm and I’m going to make a point of writing at least 1,000 words tomorrow no matter what I have to do to get them done.
Also, starting Thursday, I’m going to do my first Book in 7 Days Challenge. It’ll be a little bit of a cheat since I do already have about 10k words written on this book, but it’s going to be a great experiment. The reason I’m planning it is because I want to finish this book before Christmas. And if I can’t do it, I want to be able to say I worked like a maniac trying.
So, here I go. I’m going to set the timer for 60 minutes, which’ll put me breaking at 8:30 pm. Be back then.
I’ve managed a few more sessions, shorter than I’d have liked them to be and at 10:47, it’s still later than I wanted to end the night.
Here are my ending stats for the day:
178 Total minutes
1,256 Total words
423 Total WPH
2.966666667 Hours completed
Tomorrow is a day off, but I’m still planning to get in that 1,000 words. I’m at a place now where I should be able to pick up speed. No more writing through scenes I’d already written, replacing what was there with new stuff and deleting what I didn’t replace. It’s pretty much all new stuff from here on. At least until I hit another wall. ;)
Goodnight!
I’m committing to this now. Tomorrow I’m going to get up, ready to write, and aim for my one-day word count record, with the intention of setting a new one. That’d be 5,759 words. :) Or something like that.
Today, on the other hand, has been less than stellar, and somehow I never even got around to writing. Boo. This isn’t going to happen tomorrow.
Now I must scramble to put something on the page for my new book so I don’t break my barely alive writing-every-day streak and then get to bed so I don’t start writing late tomorrow! :o
Of course, I’m too introverted to actually say that on KBoards. :D But it’s true.
The survivorship bias is huge on the boards, because no one wants to talk about what it means to earn a living writing, and yet not be one of the superstars. Some of that is because quite often any income that falls below HUGE is met with stuff like “if you want to be average that’s all well and good but I don’t want to be average so I have to do the things that will make me not average.” It’s a terrible paraphrase, but that’s the attitude I feel like predominates the talk when writer income gets mentioned.
The U.S. Census Bureau reported in September 2014 that:
I bolded this, because household income is not personal (per capita) income. It’s the income of everyone in the household. $51,939 yearly comes to $4,328.25 a month. This isn’t after-tax money. Oh, no. This is pre-tax.
From Census.gov:
Median household income (in 2014 dollars), 2010-2014: $53,482
Per capita income in past 12 months (in 2014 dollars), 2010-2014: $28,555
The per capita income is the one to look at: $28,555. That’s $2,379.58 in pre-tax money per month.
A new writer might want to make a lot more money than this in the longer term, but at the beginning of a career, to expect a whole lot more from a job that requires more skill than money to get started with seems kind of crazy.
And yet so many writers on KBoards are getting the idea that income like this, normal income for U.S. citizens, is failure.
Failure.
That’s why I titled this post the way I did. It’s just crazy to think of oneself as a failure because you aren’t a superstar.
This has been my public service announcement to all writers everywhere, especially to those just starting out.
Don’t quit when you’re just getting started because the income you’re earning is less than that of a superstar. Everybody can’t be a superstar. If that’s really your goal and you aren’t getting there, then quit, but if your goal is to just write and make a living, start with realistic expectations and go from there. Dreams are great. Pushing for more is great. But don’t feel like a failure because you’re average out of the gate. It can take time for most people to build up to better earnings in a career. This career path is no different.
So I mentioned a week or so ago that I’d broken my no more zero word days (aka write every day) streak, unintentionally. I really have had a hard time getting started again, but a few days ago I managed.
Today is day number 3 of the new streak. I figure since I’ve made it 3 days and today wasn’t a “token” day, I’ll start counting up again.
Here’s what the last three days have looked like:
372
77
1,522
Yesterday was a token day—I admit it. But today I feel like, despite the tiredness and giving up early, I’m back at it. From now until I finish another book, I’m going to be working every day trying to hit that reasonable daily word count I know I should be capable of.
I kind of want to scream. The wind is howling outside and I’m tired and I always love the breezy days and nights. Something about the way the gusts hit the house and make it shake just a little always makes me feel so … restful. Odd, I think, but that’s the truth.
Restful isn’t what I need right now though, because I’m only at 1,522 words for the day—far from my 4,558 word goal.
But I really want to stop and just … do something else. I’m not really bored with the new book, I’m just tired.
Although I haven’t been writing for the past 15 days (not counting the days when I worked on publishing stuff for the last book I wrote), I have been doing lots of other publishing stuff and working on book covers, formatting, etc, and I’ve had a lot of really long days. I think I’m just burning out a bit, and I need a break.
I haven’t made time to read any fiction or watch more than an episode of tv here and there. I think … I’m going to shut down for a while, do these other things, get some Christmas shopping done, and see how I feel at about 9 pm. If I feel like resuming the writing for an hour or two I might try, and if I don’t, I think I’ll just read something fun!
Well. Unless I can write 2x what I needed to write to reach my 42,000 words in 10 days challenge, I’ve really blown this one.
I’ve been working, but I haven’t written any appreciable number of words in the last 4 days. That leaves me 6 days. But no, it really doesn’t, because I have one of those days scheduled for a personal day, because, holidays. And there’s just no way. I’m going to have to rethink this challenge and do something different.
Whatever I do, I’ll be starting it today. I am going to do everything I can to write my 4,558 words today.
The goal is to hit these markers as I go today:
(Well, that sucks. I just discovered that the update to WordPress has killed the ability to paste a nicely formatted table in from Excel. I had to paste it into Evernote and then copy it back from there to get the table.)
| 11 am | 651 |
| 12 pm | 1,302 |
| 2 pm | 1,953 |
| 3 pm | 2,605 |
| 4 pm | 3,256 |
| 7 pm | 3,907 |
| 8 pm | 4,558 |
If I can stay on track, this will be a nicely paced day of writing for me; I’ll reach my goals; and I’ll have time for some other things I want to do before I go to bed tonight, despite having started writing late.
(3:04 pm) I’m not on track at all. I did complete 2 sessions before lunch, but my word counts were … not good. I’m at 136 words for the day at the moment, and although I did write quite a few more words than that, those words have been lost to the number of words I deleted. A rough guess says my pace isn’t that far off the mark, but I need to complete several more writing sessions to prove it. Now, it’s time to get back to work.
Hmm. So far, not so good. I’m not restarting this challenge so my big fat zero from yesterday has really put the pressure on and my 271 words so far today isn’t doing much to release it.
Oh, well. Gotta keep going. That’s really all I can do. I don’t want to give up yet so I’m not going to. :)
I need to finish my next book. That’d be about 42,000 words, and to finish on time to publish when I’d like to publish, that gives me about 10 days to write them.
Uh.
I’d better get started. I’ve puttered around long enough since I finished the last one. It won’t require anything more from me than meeting my reasonable daily word count for 10 days. (4,251 x 10 = 42,510 words, or better yet, 4,558 x 10 = 45,580 words). I can do that.
I’ll post my chart with session times and word counts for the day later. I’m determined to make today count. I want to beat that no more zero word days record of 122 days and today is day 1 (again). :D
First thing: No WiFi!
See ya!
Unless I’m mistaken, and it is possible, although not likely, I’ve just reached a sales milestone. It appears that I’ve sold more copies of my books today than I’ve ever sold in a single day. This is easy for me to know, because I’ve never done a promo outside of a Kindle Countdown deal for my new pen name, and so I’ve never had a crazy good sales day that has just blown me away. That deal wasn’t advertised so I hardly sold anything.
The thing is, I don’t have to sell a crazy number of copies of my books to earn quite a decent amount of money, because I sell my novels at $6.99 and I don’t price promotionally except in really rare circumstances. I’ve done one .99 sale on one of my books, because I was testing out Google Play, and Amazon price matched. Because I didn’t advertise the price, I sold relatively few copies. Not enough to cover the revenue from what I would have sold at full price if there’d been no promo price at all. Then I’ve had that Kindle Countdown deal for my other pen name book, and sold a few copies, but again, no advertising of the price, so not many sales.
Everything I’ve seen so far suggests that if I’m not going to advertise, I’m much better off keeping my books at full price all the time and putting out more books. When a new book comes out in a series, all the books benefit in a significant way.
And that brings me to today. Best sales day ever for me, and nothing to credit for it except the new release and organic growth. Here’s to hoping today isn’t the peak and tomorrow isn’t the crash. :D
And if it is, it was fun while it lasted. :D
No restart on the writing streak last night. Today I will definitely be writing. Even though I have plans to do some other stuff too.
I stayed up way too late making those cover adjustments, but I feel like I’m starting to get somewhere with the covers. I can see a huge evolution in my skill level between the first covers I did and these last few.
I’m toying with the idea of playing with my earlier covers and not outright changing/rebranding them, just cleaning them up. That right there might be enough to make me happy with them for the time being, while I fight with myself over hiring a designer who can create something I love for them. :D
But hiring it out means less practice, and lots of practice is exactly what I need. I like designing the art for the covers, if I don’t put pressure on myself: if I needed to release this book I just finished the cover for in the next week, I’d be in a whole different frame of mind, and it wouldn’t be good for my stress levels.
Anyway, I have a lot to do and I need to get started. I want to write a lot of words today and I need to do so much other stuff too. Busy day ahead and I’m exhausted already. 4.5 hours of sleep last night isn’t going to do me any favors today!