Weekly Word Count: January 29

What Is This?

Following the lead of my mentor, friend, and exemplar, Tami Moore, this is a weekly article to document progress in meeting my writing goals as described here.

I set up an Excel spreadsheet to track all my work by category (blog post, copyediting work, creative writing) and item. So all I need to do is add up the “words” column and I’m good to go. I’ve also decided to give this article half-credit, since I do a bit more than just paste boilerplate and fill in numbers (see the next section, for example). However, it will be counted in the following week’s total.

Blog posts and creative writing count full credit (with the exception of this weekly article, which counts half credit). Copyediting for other writers is counted at ten percent of the actual word count for the document; style sheets for that copyediting will count twenty-five percent. Editing my own work, if and when I get to that point, will count fifty percent of starting word count.

How Did I Do?

My weekly goal is 2,000 words. This week, I published three articles to the blog. I copyedited a short story for Bre, as well as Chapter 6 of Feather Path for Iris Harper. Finally, I started Chapter 2 of Darklight. Significantly, about half of my output this week was done while on vacation, so I am very happy I was able to manage the time to do some "work" as well.

"Weekly Word Count: January 22" – Blog Post @ 50% – 367 words
Feather Path, Chapter 6 – Copyediting @ 10% – 661 words
"Kinda Sorta AFK" – Blog Post – 486 words
"Hellsfire" – short story – Copyediting @ 10% – 242 words
"On Writing: A Mini-Epiphany" – Blog Post – 550 words
Darklight – Chapter 2 – Creative Writing – 452 words

Total: 2,758 words. This is the first week my goal was 2,000 words (up from 1,500 previously), so I’m glad I was able to significantly exceed my target despite traveling all day Monday, and vacationing the rest of the week.

Before starting to write on Darklight, I did a quick and dirty outline for chapter 2; I’m not counting that product in the weekly total (yet); I suspect if I start expanding the outline, I’ll start to include it. However, I’m still getting used to using Scrivener for my writing, and I don’t quite have the hang of the outlining tool. On the other hand, I really am starting to see the potential for Scrivener to be a powerfully effective tool for organizing and developing almost any writing project.

Other Stuff

My wife’s birthday is today, January 29. So, I’m posting this article a bit early, then calling it a night. Tomorrow is her day, and tomorrow night, a 5-star meal at Giancarlo’s in Morro Bay. Have a great weekend, everyone!