Part of my new and improved resolve to Finish Things is accountability, and to that end I’ve created a master spreadsheet for the year where I’m tracking my daily writing, good things that happen (h/t Christie Yant), projects I want to work on, and deadlines I’m working towards. It’s not perfect, but it’s a start.

I’m trying to work every day while I’m involved in a project. Writing is, or should be, what I spend the most time on, at least at this stage in my current WIP. The non-writing tasks, like research, outlining, etc, are limited to what’s necessary to finish the draft. Research is my way to procrastinate. I did a ton before I started writing, I’ll do more after the first draft is finished, but at some point I actually have to write this thing.

I don’t want to take away time from writing, so I’m allowing myself to spam the world with statistics once a week.

Project: Black Mirror

New words written this week: 2,031

Average words/day: 338

It’s too soon since I started tracking daily stats to say if I’m going to hit my deadline or not. This first week has sort of been the warm-up, shaking off the rust of not writing at all for a couple months. I started at 364 days, no words one day (but outlining a new chapter), and ended today at 845. I think I’ll settle at a comfortable, consistent pace. There’s wiggle room in my deadline, but not much. My end goal, as soon as the first draft is done, is to revise and have a draft ready for submission by my birthday in late July.