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.