I’m still surprised I managed to turn out a novel in the middle of all my class obligations–and even more surprised that I’ve not only picked up a new plot bunny, but also made progress on a novella that is on KKP’s slate for release next month.
I can’t make any guarantees I’ll actually finish writing it this month, but I did manage well over 2K words this week. As well as completing my paper and discussion board assignments on time.
Sometimes, I shock myself.
And, I think there really is something to having tools to track progress and have goals. I’m grateful primarily to ROW80 for that framework, but this week, I also discovered Write Track. This is like having the NaNoWriMo charting on steroids! You set your own goals, as well as provide weights to the various dates in your proposed timeline to break down your progress into the necessary chunks to reach that goal. Another help on this path was my discovery of #WriteClub, another group of Tweeters pushing word sprints on Friday nights.
I’ve started off setting mine for 15K words for the month. That would be more than enough to finish the novella, and I started at a deficit not having written for the first 10 days of the month, but even on days I’m theoretically going to be more productive than others, I don’t need to churn out any more words than a typical NaNo number to be able to meet my goal. I missed a few days of the plan in the middle of the week, too, as other tasks and plans came into play, and the tool has recalculated on the fly, so I still know what I need to do to be successful.
Did I mention I’m a geek about tracking numbers?
😉
So far today, I’ve managed just about half of what the plan calls for, and since a different part of our plan calls for going to bed before midnight, I think I’m going to have to be happy with that, but I feel much happier for understanding specific word counts to be able to manage my plans. In the meantime, check out what everyone else participating in ROW80 has managed.
Oh… And don’t forget, Red Slaves book 2 is on a virtual blog tour (there’s even a give-away!). I’m enjoying seeing the name spread around the internetz, and hoping that more people decide to investigate the story based on the awesome blurbs the Blurb Doctor helped me craft.