I’m practicing writing more. By the new year, I want to get my week’s word count up to 16,800 and keep it there. It’s going to be hard to do with the holidays in the way, but I think it’s possible. I’ll probably have a few really good days and a few very low days, but it will all add up.
This is all because I’ve dumped using averages to tell me anything about my writing.
I took a hard look at all my numbers a while back and realized that the data I’ve collected is nothing but a series of outliers. Meaning averages don’t tell me anything useful about myself or my writing habits other than that sometimes I write a lot and sometimes I hardly write at all.
The thing that will be more useful to me than averages is a quota.
I had thought about sticking with a daily quota but it leaves more room for failure. It’s easy to miss a day here and there.
But if I use a weekly quota, it’s still short-term enough to keep me focused (I think, evidence still to be accumulated) but not as dependent on me having a good day every single day. (2,400 words a day every single day is a big ask for me. But some days with bigger word counts and some days with smaller word counts is more realistic.)
On the surface, this really isn’t any different than pushing for a daily average word count of something or other, but underneath, there’s a different mindset at play when trying to hit a weekly word count target versus trying to maintain a certainly daily word count.