I Failed. And Exceeded My Wildest Expectations

I set a goal in 2024 to make consistent progress on writing new material by writing at least 500 words per week. I was on track last June, and I had aspirations to finish the year even stronger.

So, how did I end up doing?

I failed.

The week-by-week numbers tell the story of an author riding high--indeed, too close to the sun--midway through the year. Then I came crashing down. I ran out of detailed outline. My crystal clear vision blurred into aimless, disconnected scenes and settings. The midpoint chapter ballooned into two, then three, and I needed to rewind and do some re-architecting.

August into September was an especially tough stretch. I got busy at work. I battled writer's block. To some extent, I may have even been a little hungover from my prolific May/June. It shows in the month-by-month numbers! 

July and August trended down sharply and September was my nadir. I came to terms with some of the rewrites and necessary fundamental fixes and finally got back to work. As I gained confidence in my updated plan and outlines, my pace picked back up through the end of the year (holiday time off in December helped!).

When it was all said and done, I wrote (or rewrote) nearly 106,000 words in 2024. I missed a few weeks--and I didn't really get close to finishing a first draft of the Spacewalker sequel--but I'm still immensely proud of the volume and relative quality of the work-in-progress.

Here are a couple bonus plots:

What stands out to me about the day-by-day data is how powerful an unstructured block of time is. I love nothing more than waking up on the weekend, making a pot of coffee, and writing well past noon. That's reflected in Sunday (33% of total word count) being my most productive day, with Saturday (18%) as a distant second. That good writing momentum often spilled over into Monday and Tuesday, which I never would have guessed.

Finally, these numbers tell a very incomplete story. Word count, number of days, and weekly quotas are a flawed window into a totally engrossing process. What statistics cannot capture is just how saturated this story is in my brain. Its with me every day, capturing my errant thoughts and attention span, especially when I'm not actively writing. Skybreaker yearns for the page, and I'm doing my best to breathe life into it.