I thought I’d list this week’s progress and then list out how I’ve been tracking from the beginning and maybe even compare it to this time last year and a few of my more productive 7 week periods from the past just to see if there’s anything there to learn.
Thursday—Wednesday, May 19–May 25
(9)
907
1,201
951
1,511
730
1,299
Total: 6,590 words.
My pace was down significantly this week too, the average coming in around 356 wph.
I worked only on the book I was trying to finish this week. Not even one word for another book.
As I said in another post, this week has been the second week I’ve had to get through that is completely out of my routine because of the end of the school year for my kids. I did better than last week, but not by much.
I don’t honestly know how much of that to blame on the messed up routine and how much to blame on trying to work on only one story. I’ve decided the latter is just not going to work, not even with me knowing I need to get this book I’ve been trying to finish finished. As soon as I started telling myself I needed to work on one book and one book only, my word counts plummeted.
So, I’m backing off the deadline. It was a personal deadline anyway, and it’s not the end of the world. It feels like a big deal, but I’ll just have to let that go in favor of getting more words so I end up with more books, faster.
Now, for the summary.
Week 1: 21,873
Week 2: 10,959
Week 3: 16,927
Week 4: 11,948
Week 5: 11,282
Week 6: 4,296
Week 7: 6,590
Total: 83,875 words
To compare previous 7 week periods:
- Last year: 7 weeks ended 5/26/15: 40,035 words
- My highest word count from any 7 week period since I started keeping records ended 3/24/13: 89,587 words
- The highest I’ve made it during any other 7 week period is in the low 60,000s.
I believe the downward trend in my word counts isn’t something problematic so much as it’s a result of my shifting routine with the end of the school year.
The next couple of weeks should provide evidence of that, or to the contrary if it turns out I’m wrong. Still, I’m convinced this method is exactly what I needed to increase the number of words I write every month and that it has serious long-term potential for me. :)