Going into the new year, I set a goal for drafting. My goal was to draft at least 1,000 words a day, every weekday throughout the whole year. That would be 260,000 words.
In practical terms, that would mean that I would be able to finish the companion stories for my 3rd novel, and draft the 4th and 5th novels, complete with three companion stories each.
Well, the second week in January, we had an issue with home repair that took the entire week. No drafting. I had two paths ahead of me. One was to abandon the goal and just write whenever for the whole year. Or...stick to the goal and make up the words as I go. This writing thing is a marathon, not a sprint, so making up the deficit of a week of no writing should be doable over the next few months.
I chose the second option. Here are the results of January:
As you can see, even despite the setback, I was able to draft just shy of 18,000 words. The goal was 22,000 words. That's 82% of the goal! Even though I am 4,000 words short of the goal, I have 11 months to make that up. It shouldn't be hard. I'm really glad I didn't quit during that second week.
I was able to complete "Secret School", a novelette that I had started in the previous year, and completely draft "Secret Seed". These two novelettes will serve as a prequel and a midquel (don't mind the esoteric terminology) to my third novel "I Was a Teenage MILAB", which I am super-excited to share with the world.
Here's a breakdown of my productivity:
I wrote on 14 days, and met my goal of at least 1000 words on 11 of those days.
I made no attempt to write on 8 days, which was over a third of the writing days for January. Hopefully, that won't happen again.
I also wrote a bit on one weekend day.
Not bad. But not great. Definitely room for improvement.
In summary, January was what it was. The stories that were written, I feel, came out great. My drafting goals are not as high as I would like them to be, but they are realistic for the time I have to devote to the craft.
Besides drafting, I have to re-write and edit and do all of the things you have to do to publish. I also have a family (which comes first), and a full-time job to pay the bills. I don't have much time for writing and publishing, so I'm going to have to work harder to meet the meager drafting goals that I have set.