Friday, March 11, 2011

Tracking Novel Word Counts With Handy Excel Graphs

I'm happy to say that, with only a minor amount of frustration, I've remembered my Excel skills enough to create a chart of my daily word count goals and achievements!

As you can see, I'm a little bit behind from where I'd ideally like to be at this point. I'm heading for a total novel length of 87,000 words in a little under a month, which makes for about 3,000 words a day.

I just broke 12,000 words, and I'm actually feeling pretty motivated today compared to the past few days. I have at least one more fifteen minute sprint left in me.

Thursday, March 10, 2011

Another Day of Word Count Tracking: Writing a Novel in March

It's getting late again, and again I really want to get a few more words in before bed. I've been busy with non-writing activities over the last few days, and I know that I can catch up on writing once I get some more solid blocks of time, but I'm worried about falling too far behind right in the beginning of my challenge.

So. It is now 12:34 a.m., and my word count is 4,828. I'll be back to record my word count in fifteen minutes!

15 minutes is up! My word count is 5,279, for a total of 451 words. I think I'll do one more spurt, and then finish for the night.

And done again. 5,776, for a total of 497. I think it's time to sleep, though I might try to break 6,000 words first. To all those people out there writing on a deadline too, I wish you luck!

Wednesday, March 9, 2011

Staying Motivated To Write My Novel in March

I've been falling behind in my word counts, so I figured some accountability was in order. Here's my word count as of 1:49 a.m.:

3090

I'm going to come back in 15 minutes and post what I get. Wish me luck!

Edit: 3634. Woot!

Sunday, March 6, 2011

Starting a New Novel and March 2011 Goals

So it's that time again - time to post my goals for the month!

Here they are, in all of their March-y glory.
  • Get the plan for my next novel into reasonably good shape (due March 5). Finished this on time! Whoo hoo!
  • Write 50,000 words. Just signed up for MarNoWriMo (March Novel Writing Month) to help that along! I've also just started on the first draft today, boldly plunging ahead even thought I'm definitely scared to be writing in a completely new genre and finally with the intention of seeing this manuscript through to publication.
  • Write 12 articles for Weird Worm. So far, I've done three this month, just have to be careful not to fall behind.
  • Approach 2 new markets.
  • Publish about once a day on writing site Squidoo lens per day (aiming for 20 this month).
  • Do taxes
  • Run 3 miles in 28 minutes. My best time so far has been 30 minutes.
I'm also keeping track of my 2011 goals on Squidoo, if anyone is interested in following my progress and encouraging me/yelling at me when I fall behind :)