10 Blogs and counting

Wow! Ten blogs and going strong. This is exciting. I’m learning a lot about my non-fiction skillset. What have I done?

I opened up Scrivener on Sunday, Oct 21. My goal? To write at least two months worth of blog entries, preferably more, so that I could automate them for my upcoming writing goals in November. In November, I want to focus on book two of The Fae Awakening series, along with getting the Fury pre-release contest running. Lots to do, and only seven days left before I switch gears.

On Sunday, I wrote two blogs, Feeding Bart Simpson’s Noggin and Welcome to Wacky Land. These each took me about 40 minutes to write. I only wrote one on Monday, but was focused on my book cover contest and the day job. On Tuesday, I decided I needed to write at least two entries a day this week in order to get my two months worth of content.

I wrote three on Tuesday.

This is my fourth entry today!

I record all of my progress using Toggl, a time tracking app. After writing an entry, I stop the timer and enter the name and word count. Feeding Bart Simpson’s Noggin was 732 words before editing. Welcome to Wacky Land was 632. They each took around 45 minutes to write.

Normally, I can write about 1000 words in 40 minutes when I’m writing fiction. Sometimes more, sometimes less.

This is my first attempt at really pushing through non-fiction. Today I’ve written four blogs with counts of
683 words in 25 minutes,
665 words in 23 minutes,
and 641 words in 22 minutes.

I’m now writing at an average around 1136 words for a 40 minute sprint. That is a huge increase compared to Sunday, which was about 634 words for a 40 minute sprint.

If you can’t tell, I like 40 minute sprints. More on this later. The point is that I wouldn’t know these numbers if I wasn’t tracking and implementing goals. This shows that I’m on track and getting better. Faster doesn’t always mean better, but you need to track to make sure you are hitting your targets.

Plus, it just feels damn good to look back and see the progress.

If you don’t already track your goals, start. Make sure you track your time, too. You can always use a spreadsheet or something more advanced like Toggl, my go to time tracking software.

Track. Track. Track.

Place goals, track your goals, and you’ll succeed.

— Will

P.S. The writing speed for this entry was 976 words per 40 minutes. A little slower, but I had to “do the maths”.