Writing Progress: Jan - mid-Feb

Happy Katsucon weekend! 

I had some ideas for posts this weekend, but I didn't get any of them ready in time. Sorry. Instead, I'm going to talk about how my writing has gone the past month and a half or so! I'm really proud of how I've been doing since the new year and I wanted to take some time to show it off ヽ( ᐛ )ノ♪♬

This post is gonna be more about numbers than what I've been focusing on writing. The numbers are what I'm more excited about, tbh

I don't know if I mentioned this before, but December was a huge writing lull for me. I wrote less than 5,000 words the entire month.

Sometime after Jan 6 (that little tiny bar on the chart) I decided to challenge myself to writing at least 500 words every day. Last year I let myself slack off a lot, so there are a lot of little Xes in the calendar I used last year. I didn't want that to happen again in 2016.

I figured out how to make these kinds of charts so I could see my total amounts per day if I worked on more than one story. 

The blue is a little overwhelming, but I let myself focus on Aperture in January so I could get back into the habit of writing. Aperture is the easiest for me to write, and I wanted to focus on it again after giving it a break in November and almost all of December. 

I did manage to make a little progress on Casanova! I haven't talked about Duality much since it's a smaller project, but I worked on it on the 12th when I didn't feel like working on Casanova or Aperture. Having a hoard of story ideas is good so you can be productive even when you don't feel in the mood for certain projects. 

I decided to add onto the challenge in February and write at least 100 words for Casanova every day. I've kept it up so far! I haven't had nearly as impressive word counts as I've had in the past, but I'm really happy with the balance I've had. 

I'm also learning how to favor Casanova when I want to incorporate ideas I've picked up from what goes on irl. Aperture is based heavily on what goes on around me and I tend to default back to the quartet, but I'm starting to get the hang of putting Toni and Carter in their place instead. 

I also started using Google Docs to write when I'm not at home! It's been a little bit of an adjustment but it takes a lot of the stress out of reaching my goal every day. I can get 45 minutes of writing done while waiting for my morning MWF class. 

I keep an Excel of my word counts as a backup to my paper calendar and to get the charts I posted above. It's fun to update the sheet and watch the bars get taller (•̀ᴗ•́)و ̑̑

When I set up the file, I included all the stories that I've written at least something for in the past. I also included two blank columns in case I pick up new stories this year. (If I pick up more than two, I have to fix all the equations for column J OTL)

Having an Excel spreadsheet for word counts has been really helpful so far. I've taught myself more about using equations to get the totals per day and how to set up the charts for each month. And how to get the dates put in with the format I want and without having to type them in all by hand. (I redid column A about three times. It was a pain. I know how to do it now!) 

I'm still picking at Casanova and writing what I feel like instead of what I know needs to be done to fix up the first draft, but I think I'm making good progress nonetheless. Writing vignettes (like I do for Aperture all the time) is helping me get a better sense of the smaller details and subplots that could go into the story. 

This is much better progress than waiting until I feel inspired to write anything for it, which was how I did before and after November. I wanted my approach to be NaNo-like but without all the stress, and I'm happy to say that it's working! I gave myself enough flexibility to work on what I feel like while still keeping a commitment to Casanova. 

Here's to hoping I can keep this going as long as possible! Now that I've gotten used to writing vignettes on my HTC there's no reason for me to skip writing days ( งᐛ )ง