Tracking Words

At the end of March, I reviewed my 2013 goals to see where I was and how I was doing. I had put down that I wanted to write 2000 words a day or 5000 words a month. I always do a tracker for each project I start but I really didn’t now how many words per week/month I was getting down. Because I’m totally anal, I put together a progress tracker just to see how I was doing. I was excited by the results.

Here’s where I ended up for the first three months of the year:

January – 19797
February – 18829
March – 43694

Wow. March was a big month for me! I was determined to finish one of my works-in-progress.

Here’s how that breaks down:

I finished my third Knight book in February with a final word count of 83205. But I was also writing the secret project, which I finished in mid-March. I was determined to get that book done by the time I went to the Dallas conference. I completed that at 85399. But I was writing a lot during a two-week stretch. I did over 12,000 words one week and over 11,000 words the next. As soon as I wrapped up that book, I started on my second Atlantis book.

I’m exhausted just reading about it all. 😉

Here’s the most telling data of all. I start tracking progress in July 2012. My year-end total for those months was 72396. At the end of March 2013, I’m at 82320. So what this tells me is I need to keep shooting for 5000 words a week (I only write during the week; not on weekends). If I can do that, I’ll end up with 20,000 a month and a whole lot of new material. That’s what counts, right?

What the tracker illustrates to me is I have improved my output quite a bit. I’ve also managed to train myself to writer faster and more. Now if I could just train myself to write better and perfect, all would be right with the world. 🙂