Well, I did it. I was on the ropes a few times but always found the time, energy, and creative hook to keep my story, It’s Like Jazz, moving along and hitting the requisite 50,000 words.
Here are two charts showing how much I wrote each day of the month, with the scatter plot normalized to the daily goal of about 1667 words to maintain my pace.
I drove all day on the 25th, hence the lack of progress. I was also in the car all day on the 29th but managed to get a reasonable amount done for a couple of hours while Erin drove in the afternoon.
Here are two charts showing my progress relative to my ideal pace. The line chart isn’t easy to read because of the scale, which is why there is also the raw number of words away I am from that day’s total word count goal.
It was a rollercoaster of a month. The first ten days were reasonable, but then travel knocked me down. I worked my way back, got knocked down again by travel, and once again fought through to finish. I hit 50,000 words around one in the afternoon on the 30th, but it felt anticlimactic.
In 2019, I had no intention of “finishing” anything. I didn’t like what I had written and instead was focused on the basic exercise of getting words out. For the three years where I wrote short stories, I always finished them. Even if I was short of the official word count, I earned a sense of accomplishment. This year, I wrote a story that I enjoyed. It had momentum; it had moments I loved. I don’t know if it’s good, but I liked writing it and think it might be worth completing. I’m not sure if I ever will, though.
I’m proud of my work this year. It makes writing a novel feel attainable in a way I never thought it could, and it gives me confidence and motivation to stick with my fiction writing.