This last weekend things came to a head for me. Mr. Quinn ran his longest triathlon to date and that took basically all weekend between prep, packing, planning, laundry, driving, volunteering, and so on. I had three zero word days in a row and on Sunday night when I sat down to try and write at 6:47 p.m. after having been up since 4 a.m. I just cried. I opened Scrivener and I cried.

I wanted to make goal so bad. I wanted to write something. Anything. I wanted words to count so I could make the goal for April. I wanted to make the goal for the first time in 2018.

I didn’t. Mr. Quinn, also exhausted beyond words, reached over and gently closed the laptop. He turned on something on TV and told me to go to sleep.

I did. And I slept for 12 hours straight. It was glorious.

On Monday morning I had a meeting with my staff. In case you’re wondering that’s my agent (me), the CFO (me), the CEO (me), the marketing team (me), the cover artist (also me), and my therapists (the dogs). Yeah, I did some hard thinking about whether this plan was working.

I posted before about Wayne Stinett’s process of writing, editing, and planning production. I committed to trying it alongside the 365 writing challenge I was also participating in.

I had intended to step back and evaluate the process and tracking at the end of March (first quarter), but got busy and forgot, so I moved it to the end of April – the first third of the year.

The Stats

As of April 30th:

I have written 105,438 words.

That’s a lot for me! I am really very proud of the amount of writing I’ve done this year. For comparison, I had written 48,290 words by the end of April 2017. I’ve more than doubled my output year over year!

However, you’ll notice (because I’m going to do the math for you) that my average per day isn’t what I had initially planned. I had set a goal of 1,200 words per day and managed to hit about 879 words per day in reality. If I had stayed on goal I would have had 144,000 words.

The biggest obstacle I had to attain that goal is that it’s 365 days, meaning the idea is to write on the weekends and holidays and vacations. Never take a day off.

That hasn’t worked for me, and it likely never will. I am busy on the weekends, volunteering and spending time with my family. I thought I’d be able to tuck writing into little spaces on weekends and keep my goal pace, but it’s just too much. There were a lot of zeros on the weekends.

And those zeros and never making the goal for the month started to wear on me. It’s not a good thing to constantly feel behind and like you just can’t succeed.

Going Forward

It’s May 1st, so we’re starting the second third of 2018. After taking a hard look at my reality I had a decision to make. I could try to meet the weekly goal of 8,400 words per week in 5 days – or 1,680 words per day – or I could lower my overall goal.

After I looked at my average daily output (879 words) I decided that setting a goal of nearly double that five days a week was probably only going to set me up for more failure. Wayne Stinett does 1,000 words a day as his goal and it seems to be working for him. Five thousand words a week is the advice of the pro, so who am I to argue?

Starting today, that’s my goal. It feels achievable and I even went in and reworked my production calendar with the new word counts. Yes, it takes longer to write a book at these lower word counts, but I would rather take a little longer and keep a schedule that leads to feelings of success.

I also want to not feel guilty for taking off weekends or taking a vacation from writing (my job) every now and then.  If for no other reason than my mental health.

I’m looking forward to coming back and reporting on this at the end of August. Thanks for coming along on this adventure with me!