Monthly Stats - April 20
I can't imagine this is entertaining for anyone, but it's part of my quest to build better habits. Having to set goals - and be accountable for them! - monthly is working better for me than some nebulous New Year's resolution would have been. Out of sight, I'm keeping a daily spreadsheet of writing, and monthly I post my numbers here. It was a challenging month, on a personal level. The house routine is all out of whack. At the beginning of the month I was still recovering from my illness in March. Nonetheless, on the writing front I am quite pleased with my ability to not only write daily, but to have a higher wordcount total than I had in March. I came into May having written 14836 words of fiction, up from 11119 in March.
My non-fiction wordcount, despite not writing a blog every day, is actually higher still, at 15445, but I expect that will stay more-or-less constant as the months go by. At any rate, it will be interesting to look at the averages at the end of the year. The reason I believe it will stay constant is two-fold: I write at least 1000 words for the MGC every Saturday (averages) and I am not making my personal blog either daily, or word-count limited. Some days I'm going to write short here. Other days I might be moved to a lengthy essay. Sadly, while I have ideas for those, I rarely have the time and mental energy to complete them.
The fiction, on the other hand. Well, I really want to increase that. I have limiters in place. Until the house has settled, writing time is very difficult to obtain. It happens and I have to seize it, when the Muse is with me, or not. Looking at this last month, my lowest day was a day I was sick and exhausted. I need to try and prevent that from happening. But the other big limiter is time. Weekends are the worst for writing. I simply have too much to do on the weekends. Workdays I can usually manage a half hour or so to write. Weekends... no. Everyone needs me, I work on house stuff until I drop at night. I can't. It's frustrating, but it's an immutable law of my existence.
So my goals for the month of May are twofold. On the professional side, I mean to write no less than 100 words a day. I think this is achievable. Looking at April, I was under 100 words only 5 days out of the 30. My average daily wordcount was 495 words, but I don't think setting my sights on no less than 500 words daily is wise. I'll fail, and that's not going to help me keep working on getting better incrementally. Small bites. On the personal side I am going to be increasing my exercise. I need to get back in that habit - 6 months at the new job have defeated almost the entire work of the previous year to lose weight and get fit. So. I must work on that again.
Clawing my way up the slope. There will be days I slide backwards, so I must always endeavour to attain greater heights lest I lose all my momentum.
As a sidebar - I do art every day. I have been doing art every single day since last year, no, since December 2018. It's not always good art. Some days it's a complete failure. I don't have the ability to spend the hours of practice and skill-learning on it. But it relaxes me, so there's that?