July Numbers/ August Goals

In Real Life:

We found out in the middle of July that the place we’ve been trying to move into for a year is finally ours! Which is great… but it also means that there’s a lot of packing and nonsense going on that has the potential to mess up my writing mojo for the next three months. I’m going to spin this to the positive side (in my head) for now and hope I can keep momentum up otherwise.

 

Reading:

4 Books
(Avg GR Rating 3)

Technically a cheat, I met this month’s goal by reading 2 novellas right there at the end and a 2 DNFs earlier this month.

It’s always depressing when you think you might like a plot line only to find that it’s poorly written and you have to toss the book away. 

Goal: 3 Books. Met!

Writing:

87,175-words in 30 days
(AVG 2905-words/day)

Focus was not my friend this month, at least not at the end. I got those 87k words in (if we exclude the random admin stuff) writing on 11 different projects!

Several days this week, my work schedule had me up at 3 and in the office by 4:30. And while that (oddly) made getting high word counts pretty easy, early mornings aren’t great for me being aware enough that I can get through the patch-work I’m doing on my priority #1 ms. Hopefully, the next two weeks will change that.

The unfortunate fact is… I didn’t pay attention throughout the month, and sort of forgot that I needed 90k. So I was working toward 85… which I met. Oops! Guess I’ll have to make it up.

Goal: 90,000 words. Not Met.

 

Publishing:

I took another break but August has a fun one for you.

Goal: Take a break. Met.

 

 

Reading – 4 books

And this time, I plan to get 4 full length novels that are finished in. If I have more DNFs or Novellas, great! But I’m going to try to drag myself out of my reading slump without cheating.

Writing – 90k words

And this time, I’ll be sure to write down this goal in my monthly spreadsheet, so I don’t lose track of myself again.
I’ve got 40k words earmarked for completion this month on one project, so it’s just a matter of finding the other 50!

Publishing – 1 Book

My next book comes out August 22^nd! If you want to read the first chapter, sneak a peek at my July Newsletter (and sign up for future previews).
Oath Breaker is the first in the Death of Empire series.

Other –

Pretty sure I’ve talked about this before, but 2013 was a banner year for word count (1 million!) but it left me with a stack of finished manuscripts that were hastily written and in need of “floor-to-ceiling” edits. I’ve been avoiding those—which is a shame. So toward the end of last month, I pulled out the one I believe is closest to being “done” and started editing. My hope is to have her cleaned up enough to send her off to the next part of my process by the end of August…. We’ll see what happens.