A Potentially Disturbing Pattern. I Blame Edits…

I was looking at the numbers again. It’s a new month; it means new numbers.

Where does January sit?

Behind November and December, actually. I did finish The Memory Collector in January, and Variety Store was really close (so close that I finished it today), but the official finish count is only one book.

I think, in addition to a few issues with life in general, the main source of the lower number trend was the edits. It takes a bit to go through the stories, reading them, sometimes out loud, to make sure they make sense and are clear, and then I go back in and change whatever I notice as I read them on my phone. Yes, I do read my books on my phone. It’s portable, and it shows me how the epub format is going.

Anyway, here’s the breakdown of what I did in January:

Additions to The Monster in My Garden Shed: 15,902

Near completion of Variety Store:  62,650

Everyday posts to The Not-So-Super Superhero:  38,337

Complete total for The Memory Collector:  42,634

Start for the third Nickel and Dime, tentatively titled Five and Ten:   1,464

Shorts probably to be included later in the Nickel and Dime series:   3,844

Miscellaneous other writings:   13,106

Total:   177,937

Again, lower than the last couple months. I’m not sure if the trend is something that should worry me, if I need to make myself buckle down and accomplish more, or if it’s too soon to tell.

I did a lot of editing, I typed on an older, handwritten story, and there was chaos going on in life as well, and so there are plenty of factors going into the count. I’ll keep an eye on it, though. It should level out somewhere, and that’s really the target.

Besides, the numbers don’t matter so much. It’s quality, not quantity, so that’s part of why editing is so important. Clearly, I haven’t stopped writing, and that’s the main thing.

November Really *Is* the Novel Writing Month

So, I thought I’d sit down and total up what I wrote all through the month of November, aka Nanowrimo, the National Novel Writing Month.

Ready to be stunned and amazed?

Well, perhaps not.

In case you’re not aware of it, I finished three novels in the month, so…

Any Other Reality, Nano, completely done in November = 67,807
The words I added to All the Men in My Life = 43,961
The words I added to In the Family = 76,307
The words added to The Monster in My Garden Shed = 25,864

Total for original fiction last month = 213,669

Two hundred thousand words, lol. I could have won Nano four times, I suppose. I’m just pleased with my overall turnout this month.  Now to get the editing going…

December Loses to November

So, I didn’t manage quite as much writing in December as I did in November. Partially because of edits, partially because of life’s unpredictable drama, and the rest because of illness. I completed one novel, not three. In November, I had Nanowrimo to work on, needing at least 50,000 words for a novel to complete that challenge, so that was a big part of the difference. I did, however, have my own personal challenge of posting a section a day to a story. That’s the Not-So-Super Superhero, and I am proud to say I only missed one day there, and there were circumstances which excuse that.

So… a look at the word count totals as they stood after midnight last night:

The Monster in Garden Shed: 62,156

First Nickel and Dime: 59,932

Second (and currently untitled) Nickel and Dime: 14,365

The Not-So-Super Superhero: 33,393

Misc other: 34,580

This Month’s Total: 190, 061

So, close to 200,000 again. Not a bad total.

If I had been consistent around that 200,000 (and I wasn’t), I’d have a yearly total somewhere around 2,400,000.

My goal this next year will be to track it and see what I come up with for a full year. It’s a bit hard for me to track where I was when 2011 started, unfortunately.

Right now, though, since I have tracked it the past couple months, I think I know where I am, and I can use that to continue keeping track of things in order to have a yearly total. I gave some consideration to looking at day-to-day totals, but not only am I not the type to be that organized, I frequently am up past midnight writing, and… oh, yeah, if people knew how much writing I did daily, I’d be in a lot of trouble. I have other responsibilities that I neglect to do as much writing as I do.

It’s so much more interesting to write than clean a house. Admit it.