Writing Goals: Reflections on a month’s worth of writing

We’ve reached the end of January, and thus it’s time for an extra-special monthly round-up edition of the writing goals. Word counts, please!

January 23, Day 23: 690 words

January 24, Day 24: 0 words

January 25, Day 25: 0 words

January 26, Day 26: 484 words

January 27, Day 27: 334 words

January 28, Day 28: 390 words

January 29, Day 29: 563 words

January 30, Day 30: 0 words (but about 2 hours worth of critiques, for my Nonfiction Read & Critique group)

January 31, Day 31: 135 words

That’s a grand total of 2,483 words for the week (through January 29) and 14,665 words for the month!

Did I beat last week’s total?

This was definitely my laziest writing week so far, taking two days off in a row, which made me feel a bit weird. I’ve really been getting into the habit of writing on a daily basis, even if it hasn’t always been at the same time each day. I have noticed that I do an awful lot of procrastinating in the mornings… which is time that would be better spent writing than playing Hay Day and/or Monkey Wrench – two ridiculous addictive iPad games that I try to reserve as rewards for having done my work (but which I also usually mess around with in the mornings while I’m drinking my coffee).

So, no, I did not manage to beat my awesome high score from week 3 of 4,101 words in a week. Damn!

But I’ve also been doing a lot more editing this week, both for my own works – including a new anthology, Everything I Need to Know About Love I Learned From Pop Songs, which debuts February 14 – and for fellow indie author, Norm Schriever, whose new book is called The Queens of Dragon Town. Highly recommended!

A badge of honor

For my participation in the 365K Club’s Poe group on Facebook, I managed to earn a weekly badge: the highly coveted Weirdest Writing Ritual badge!

Pretty cool, right?

And what was my weird writing ritual? I said that rather than donning a particular type of “thinking cap,” I actually like to dress the part of the pro author by putting on a writing-related t-shirt. My favorite is, of course, the magical “Art Harder, Motherfucker” shirt from Chuck Wendig’s merch mart. (And, yes, I got it on sale, ’cause I’m also a thrifty motherfucker!)

Have you got any Weird Writing Rituals?

How did I do for the month?

Overall, I think I really kicked ass this month. I’m proud of my word count (and the fact that I’m 15% of the way to my total!), and I can already see how much tracking my daily progress (or lack thereof) has been helping me build momentum. The days when I don’t write anything are starting to feel weird again, as they did when I wrote on a much more daily basis, and that’s a good feeling.

How many days do they say it takes to psychologically build a habit? I believe it’s 30, so I’m off to a good start. As the days and weeks continue to go by, I look forward to keeping this habit rolling.

Now if I could just work in a bit more time for exercise…

Goals for next week? Next month?

My goals for next week include doing some of the writing exercises from Writing and Selling Your Mystery Novel and, hopefully, turning them into some “prequel” types of stories about my stripper-turned-sleuth, Venus Delmar.

My goal for next month? To demolish my January word count, of course.

See you next week for another check-in!