Day 62 - End of Month Two

I have to be up in about 5 hours, but I was only 900 words off the 80,000 mark so I kept going. As a matter of fact, if it weren't for the fact that I'd be stuffed at work tomorrow I'd be quite happy to just keep writing all night. When you get into the flow, you can just surf there as long as you want pretty much.

At least until something hits you.

It's the end of month two, and I've done marginally better this month. I achieved 3.51% in my first month, and that has increased to 4.49% in month two. This is still a fair way down from the 8.34% I need each month, but still, improvement is improvement and I'll take that as something of a win. As a matter of fact, it's a 27.9% increase in output. If I keep improving at that rate, I'll catch up in no time.

In any event, I now have 304 days left of my challenge with 920,000 words remaining. This equates to 3,026 words per day.

I think one of the major things holding me back is the sheer number of 0 count days. And there's really no excuse for it. I can do 1000 words easily in about 20 minutes to half an hour. The thing is, and this goes back to the editing versus careful drafting debates as well, is that if I say to myself - Oh, you must reach your whole target even if you're tired, I probably won't do anything at all and will watch TV instead.

I need to give myself permission to have mid-range and low word count days. In most cases, once I start writing I get in the zone and I'll probably keep going. But it's important that I get something down every day.

So my major goal for month three is to not have a single 0 word count day. My secondary goal is to lower my daily target back down to the original 2,739 words per day it was when I started.


Word count - 5,281