Even though I had to work at the “day job” (which is really an afternoon/evening job), this has been a productive weekend.
Today, I wrote more than 2,000 words on Meg and Matt’s story. Yesterday, I went to plot group and had fun chatting about Meg, Matt, Brad, Erin, and Kari and Damien. There were only two of us there, so we covered a lot of ground.
With Pat’s help, I even came up with a tentative title for Meg and Matt. I’m leaning toward either “Beauty and the Ballplayer” or “The Baby and the Ballplayer.”
Either one might work. Matt, of course, is the ballplayer. That’d make Meg the beauty, though she hardly considers herself one. He does, though, so that counts for something. “The Baby and the Ballplayer” lays out both characters’ initial secrets, though. (She doesn’t know he’s an athlete and he doesn’t know she’s pregnant.)
When not writing, I’ve been playing with the “chart wizard” in Excel, which has led me to some startling realizations.
Since I started charting words written on Jan. 17, I’ve put out 18,451 of them. That’s 35 days (I think), giving me an average of about 527 words a day. Not prolific, by any means, but it’s a start.
My highest-output days are about 2,000 words. Some days it’s all I can do to squeeze out 200.
My goal of 100K words by the end of November is about 18 1/2 percent complete. I can do it!
Meg & Matt’s story is now up to 29,819 words. If I’m shooting to make it a category romance, which I think I am, that means I’m a wee bit past the halfway point. That’s exciting.
I take that back about 527 words a day not being prolific. I just did the math. If I averaged 500 words a day, that’d be 182,500 in a year. That’s approximately TWO single-title books or THREE category romances of 60K apiece. Wow!
Of course, I know I can’t keep writing at that pace. There’ll be more slow days … days when I do more editing than writing … days when I end up not writing anything at all. (I can already count 13 since I started keeping track.)
Even if I end up averaging just 200 a day, that’s 73K in a year. And considering I’m going to do the NaNo again, I’ll get 50K just in November (I hope. I plan to actually finish NaNo this year!)
I’m really not much of a statistics junkie … but cool charts could just help change my mind. 😉
