11:17am

In a previous post, I mentioned my perennial Quixotic crusade to develop a consistent, daily writing habit.

I will confess that my mindset on this is probably rooted in a fallacy. Most of the Pulp-era writers routinely turned out high word counts day in and day out. For example, Max Brand averaged 4,000 words per day for decades, all without missing… and he did it on a manual typewriter.

I feel like I should be able to duplicate that feat, given that I have far better tools than they did.

Now, granted… their lives were most likely substantially different from mine, so that should really factor into my consideration. Except I’m refusing to allow that.

I don’t feel that I’m asking anything truly demanding of myself. It’s not like I’ve decided to scale Mount Everest later this month with no prep or training, simply because other people have scaled it before (often with lots and lots of training and preparation).

Yes, we are all different, and I recognized that in my previous post about continuing education. Still, though, a consistent habit of averaging 4,000 words per day should be very doable if I find the proper routine/priorities/mindset/etc.

To that end, I am once again focusing on creating the habit first before worrying about the word count.

So far this year, I have focused on 4,000 words per day with my daily goal being 3,850. As of this month, my daily goal is 2,750… with the actual goal of achieving that as a daily average.

With today’s writing, I’m close…-ish. I’ll put the Writing Log screenshot below, but right now, my Average Daily Word Count is 1,926.67. I suspect that “.67” is actually “one-third,” but that’s largely neither here nor there.

Once I am able to consistently average 2,750 words per day—month in and month out—I will worry about increasing that average to my desired 4,000 minimum.

I haven’t been prioritizing my writing as much I should’ve been, and it’s beyond time I fixed that.

For me, at least, I need to order my day according to what matters most to me, because there’s an excellent chance I won’t have the drive or focus by the end of the day to give a damn about much of anything.

At present, I am on track/schedule/etc. to finish Torvalin by the end of August. When I achieve that, I will write Primogenitor #5 (Omnia) as well as finish Tribunal in September. I have allowed Tribunal to sit too long, and it’s high time I finished it, paving the way for the main Draco-Verse series.

In other news…

I have some big changes in the works for my publishing business, and I will be announcing them once I’m ready to flip the switch and make them live. I expect to do that later this month, but the necessary work is still in progress.

Another item is that I have decided to put more emphasis on my desire to pick up woodworking as a hobby. I love the idea of making my own furniture. So, you can expect to see that included in my ramblings to an increasingly greater degree.

Step One is building the shop. No… wait. Step One is designing the shop. Step Two will be building it.

All right. I’ve rambled on as much as I care to, at the moment. If you’re reading this, thanks for sticking with me.

I hope the days treat you and yours well. Stay safe out there.

August Writing Log (thus far)