October Word Count / Goals

[lizvogel]

Haley novel: 5106
Total new words in October: 5106

Target achieved! And thanks to being up all night last night, both chapters 7 & 8 are de-bracketed, and can be handed off to my alpha reader so she can tell me if I'm even remotely on the right track.

(Actually, only part of "all night" can be blamed on Haley. The rest was due to a very cute cat who curled up next to me and purred for petting. All night. There was a near-storm, and he seemed to want me close for reassurance, and he never does that. So yeah, no way was I leaving that.)

No big pushes to hit quota, just nice steady plodding, a little front-loaded toward the beginning of the month. Which is the way it's supposed to work.

Queries: Sent one or crossed off two every seven days, for a total of 3 queries sent this month.

That's all goals met. Go, me!


November's goals:

I'm not doing NaNo, but I was considering doing a NaNo-style push to get the Haley novel, if not done, at least a lot closer. However, given the way things have been going, I think I'm better off sticking to my slow-and-steady approach. Not that I'd mind if half a dozen chapters fell down over the next 30 days, but my official quota is still 5000 words.

The every-seven-days thing worked really well, so same again: one agent researched & queried or two researched & crossed off, accountable on the 7th, 14th, 21st, and 28th, working ahead permitted.

Onward!

Comments

[lavenderbard]

"However, given the way things have been going, I think I'm better off sticking to my slow-and-steady approach."

I'm with you there.

Although I'm not really all that slow. My problem is that I have CFS, and it's entirely possible (and unfortunately frequent) for me to wake up too tired to write. If I'm too tired to write, I'm too tired to write. There is no method of motivating myself that can fix it.

Finding a rate of wordage that I can comfortably achieve and and trying to be consistent about it is what works best for me. I use daily quotas, not to push myself to do more, but to help me remember to stop before I'm completely worn out -- that makes it more likely that I will be able to write the next day.

So, naturally, my latest writing project (the blue-collar engineer and the shipwrecked noble warrior with assassins and train schedules) ended up being an attack thingy that totally took over my mind, wouldn't let me ignore it, and wouldn't let me pace myself -- I wrote it in the same timespan it usually takes me to write a novel, but it's a trilogy.

I would rather not do that again any time soon, thanks. I want to go back to "slow and steady". Slow and steady apparently doesn't always make for more wordage (although in general, for me, it usually does that, too), but it definitely makes for a better quality of life.

[lizvogel]

Ah, pacing yourself -- I understand that can be useful, yes. Writing Kitchen Sink in three months was kind of a thrill, but I don't need to do that to myself again any time soon.

Not that pacing myself is usually my problem -- unless "stopped" counts as a pace. ;-)