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URL shortcut for this challenge: http://bit.ly/dailywords
I've successfully managed 500 words a day except for one day on the weekend. I'm going to wait after I attend the SCBWI conference in NYC at the end of the month before I consider ramping up to 1000 words a day.
How are the rest of you doing with your Word Count Challenges?
Monday, January 10, 2011 at 11:04 AM
Reader Comments (13)
As of yesterday I'm averaging 258 words on my 250/day challenge. So far so good! I'm still considering how to best track my progress on my blog. And whether or not I'm brave enough to do it there yet. :)
I was planning, on January 1st, to write 250 words a day, but I failed epically, until last Thursday, when I started forcing myself to write 500 words a day, again. I've been keeping that up, except for yesterday, where I actually lost 10 words because I edited instead of wrote. I need to not do that. :-/
Debbie,
Have you used http://750words.com? I really like it for a multitude of reasons. It nags you to write every day (if you want), saves as you write and gives you badges and other silly motivators. But the best part is that it keeps track of stats as you write so it can show you how productive your writing session was, your mood as you were writing it (based on word you used) and more.
It is really slick.
I have been hitting my 250, except for two days. One of them, I just plain forgot, so I made myself a daily reminder, until it becomes habit. Yesterday, I was cranky and wanted to avoid the computer since I had been having WAY too much computer time. However, I made a one line entry stating I hadn't forgotten, but didn't WANT to that night.
I was aiming for 500 a day and wrote at least 700 Mon-Thurs but then Friday saw a dip to 250 and the weekend saw a dip to a big zero when dancing replaced writing. Can we count 250 salsa steps as a good diversion? :)
I made 1349 today, so the first day of sticking to 1000 words is good. I hope to keep this pace up, I have a lot of short stories to finish. Congratulations to everyone for meeting their goals last week, I was done after the holiday and could not write much at all.
So far, so good! I'm using the 750.com thing for keeping track of my word counts/daily progress. it's really helping and I'm glad to see that I'm actually moving forward with my writing.
I wrote almost 1000 words on Jan 1st, and was knocked sideways by the flu on Jan 2nd. I couldn't get out of bed for a week. Which made me frustrated, whenever I was conscious for longer than it took to eat. On Jan 8th, I felt well enough to start writing again, and since then I've been averaging about 800-1000 words a day so far. Since I promised myself 500 words a day, I think I'm doing pretty darn well! May have to reassess in Feb, and jump to 1000 words a day! Thanks for this challenge, I'm having a blast and it's great to feel so productive.
I'm not actually starting my 500-words-a-day project until February, as I have research projects that are in dire need of attention right now, but it's great to see how other people are doing so far!
Just made it to 1000 today for the first time. Been having trouble settling in to the routine after the holidays.
Here's what I've learned: I have to write before I do anything else.
(Yeah, I know. This is a re-learning of a bleedin' obvious fact). Even checking Twitter is a disaster. Even reading email (& not responding) reminds me of OtherStuff that I have to think about.
Write first. Then spend the rest of the day on all the OtherStuff.
Well, January was supposed to be FiThDaBoMo for me - Finish The Damned Book Month. I needed 40,000 words to finish my second draft (1,290 words/day for January).
Unfortunately, I ended up not writing anything much until last Friday. I have written 3.5k since then, but obviously my 40k goal for January is more of a stretch now - I need almost 1,800 words a day to keep on track.
Still, I am enjoying the story, characters and setting so that's good. And I am working on the new plot components now, which I saved until last to give me a reward for rewriting the rest of it again.
I found your post after recommitting to write 500 words a day. That seems to be the only writing goal I can consistently attain. A successful (i.e. published) writer friend told me last year that "writing a novel isn't rocket science - it's more like stringing beads." I've been thinking this week of that - that each day/each 500 words is one more bead strung. Thanks for the encouragement!
I should do something like this - after the SCBWI conference in NYC! I'm into heavy revision mode right now, getting ready for that, apart from one small project I'm working on. My goal for that one is one chapter a day, for the rest of this week. (It's a chapter book; I think I should be able to do it.)
Can I join you on your 500-a-day challenge in February?