No April Fool's post today, just a boring one about writing.
I'm a sucker for statistics. Baseball stats, exercise stats, writing stats... I love 'em all. So, with the first quarter of 2015 in the books (get it? BOOKS?), let's take a look at how much I accomplished.
First, week-by-week totals:
- 1/5: 10,000 words written
- 1/12: 8,700
- 1/19: 7,700
- 1/26: 3,400
- 2/2: 7,000
- 2/9: 16,050
- 2/16: 10,284
- 2/23: 5,200
- 3/2: 0
- 3/9: 5,900
- 3/16: 10,100
- 3/23: 2,750
The weeks of 1/26, 3/2, and 3/23 were spent doing significant editing, hence the lower totals. The week of 2/9 I took a few vacation days from work to focus on writing. Originally the goal was to begin my thriller Sleep, but I was feeling inspired and charged head-first into the first draft of Tales of a Dying Star #4 instead.
Altogether I totaled 87,084 words for the quarter. 6,700 per week, or almost 1,000 per day, which is typically what I aim for. Not as much as last quarter (95,000 words), but considering I've done some major editing on two books I'm still pleased with the totals. I published one book (The Ancillary) and did most of the work on another (Sword of Blue), which is a good three month for anyone.
I'm excited about the next quarter. The first draft of Drowned by Fire will be complete within the next two weeks, which is the final book in the Tales of a Dying Star quadrilogy. I have more books planned for that universe, but I'm going to let my sci-fi batteries recharge by working on other projects first.
I've blocked off all of April and part of May to finish the first draft of Pillars of Wrath, the first book in my fantasy series, which has been sitting at 92,000 words since last October. Once that's done I'll turn my eyes to Sleep, the Thriller I've had outlined for months but haven't managed to make time for.
Those are my two main goals for the quarter, along with editing and publishing Drowned by Fire. Beyond that I have lots of other projects (a standalone sci-fi novel, two other thrillers, and several short stories), but if I can accomplish those by July I'll be happy.