Novel Update #12 – Rampant Success

What Dreams is at 28,813 words! This month’s update is mostly about the numbers, along with two supplemental reading recommendations.

Goals Met:

1. I passed 28,785 words, making this the longest single project I’ve ever written! This functioned as a particularly effective goal, so I think the new one will be 57,570 — twice as long.
2. That’s around 3,000 words for January, so I’m on track to up my 3,230-words-per-month average.
3. I also wrote a 3,800-word short story set in the same universe, “Murder on Station 6,” so we know I’m capable of 7k per month. 😉

I’m always trying new things with my goal calendar method… Right now I’m doing monthly word-count goals instead of daily ones, because that gives me more leeway to write a lot on some days and skip other days. Being able to put a sticker on each day is enough of a daily incentive to keep me consistently writing, so those days off don’t turn into long stretches! Here’s a pic of the completed January:

Different stickers for WD, short story, and major milestones. It looks meager, but I got a LOT done on the days when I wrote, so I’m using that experience to plan for February. If I can write that much and do it on more days, we’ll be in business.

I’m also adding some short story goals every month, but they’re very low. They’re meant to be practice, not the main event. 😉

Supplemental Reading(s):

400 Things Cops Know by Adam Plantinga — An easy-to-read list-style memoir, valuable for those writing about law enforcement!

“Surfacing” by Walter Jon Williams, a short story recommended on Speculiction way back in October. (I found in a “Best Of” collection). For some reason I have a lot of alien whales in my book…. This was a fascinating anthropological/philological study of “space whales”/”space squids,” with actual humpback whales on another planet and alien squids there to boot. It got derailed by some humans’ interpersonal relationships, bleh, but what’re you gonna do.