Tracking numbers

I’ve been sitting down every day with the same writing goal: 1000 words.

This has worked out pretty well, as you can see from this glimpse of my calendar. I record my actual word count at the end of every writing session, and you can see where I struggled and where I faltered, but also where I succeeded or surpassed my goal. It’s immensely motivating to look back and see the steady progress I’ve been making since December, but this week I decided to step things up and set a new goal:

1200 words a day.

Today I was done by lunchtime. Yesterday it was nearly 2pm before I’d finished, but I got it done. There’s a funny thing about increasing my word count goal: it makes me write faster, plunging ahead and tackling scenes that I’ve been anticipating with anxiety. My number one priority is getting the pages written, not getting hung up on perfection.

Knowing that I’m moving faster towards the end of this draft is also helping me to increase the momentum of my scenes; I’m spending less time on description and dialogue and focusing more on action. This is shortening my scenes but also propelling me forward, along with the story.

All good news, right? Hopefully I can sustain (or even increase!) this new pace over the remaining weeks it’ll take to finish this draft of the book.