The 1,689 Habit

In the past, I have had a daily target of 1,689 words. That has been... let's just say, difficult to maintain if I want to live any life other than writing. But that's pretty much what I have to do if I want to win at NaNoWriMo. I need to find a happy medium.

So, for my statistics, I'm now looking at aggregate writing production. That means my actual goal for each day is not to do 1,689 words--it's to reach a cumulative level of 1,689 a day on average.

That's a much less scary proposition. I have a graph with a cumulative production line and my target line, and so long as I keep close to that target line, I'm doing good.

That being said, I haven't written anything for the last three days. And chances are, I won't be until Thursday (getting to that in a minute). But at the same time, I'm unwilling to count blog posts and outlines toward my word count. Only finished product, man.

My compromise is to set a target of 500 words for those days. Writing is a ravenous beast always hungry for more. I owe it something every day. So that's my goal: 500 words on non-writing days, and 1,689 on writing days.

Now, this Thursday is something special. I have enough time left here at the end of the year that I can afford to take a day to write. Today and tomorrow, I'm going to get back into the swing of things, Bryony-wise. Then Thursday, it'll be time to write. I kind of got mired down in plot last time, and it will be nice to have several hours to throw at the problem, then use that momentum to push forward.

In fact, I'm going to set myself a new target for Thursday: 3,000 words. 1,500 before lunch, 1,500 after. I think I can do it.