Normally I wait until late in the evening to do this post on Wednesdays. But given the schedule I’m facing, I realized that no matter how long I wait, I won’t have the time or the energy to add to my wordcount today. In some ways, that’s disappointing. Last time I reported in, I had to admit that I had kind of stalled out. My goal for this week was to do as much writing as I could muster and get myself back on track.
And for the most part, I succeeded. Over the last week, I wrote an additional 10,275 words, bringing my grand total up to 58,119 words. That actually surprises me a little. My goal has always been to write 1,500 words a day. Normally that would mean that I would be adding 10,500 words a week, so somehow (in spite of the fact that I won’t be writing today), I somehow came within a stone’s throw of my actual goal. I mean, there was one day where I was able to tack on a bunch of extra words, but I didn’t realize it had been that many.
I also did one other thing in terms of tracking my wordcount. I adjusted my projected wordcount upwards by just a little bit. When I first started working on “Mourning Dove,” I set a goal of 100,000 words total for this book. That’s usually what I shoot for in terms of overall story length. Not too long so as to bog down the story unnecessarily, but also long enough to allow me some room to play.
The problem this time around is that, when putting together the story’s outline, I pegged one event as the story’s halfway point. Said event should occur at approximately the 50,000 word mark. As you can see, I’ve passed that point in the manuscript and the halfway point is still a ways off. For that reason, I adjusted my projected wordcount from 100,000 words to 125,000 words.
Now I don’t know if that’s actually how long this book will turn out to be. It may turn out that the events after my “halfway point” won’t take as many words to tell. But I wanted to stay accurate and try to reflect how this story is shaping up. That’s why the progress bar on the right side of your screen dipped over the last week. Before I made the adjustment, it was showing me as being past the 50% mark. Now it’s a little more accurate.
Before I wrap this up, I want to also share the last two entries for #WIPJoy. That was a lot of fun to participate in this last month. It was great seeing what a lot of people on Twitter were working on. So here were the final two entries that I made:
#WIPJoy | Day 29 #Shoutout to a writer friend who inspires you. One leaps immediately to mind. @JillWilliamson Close 2nd: @mchristineweber pic.twitter.com/Y1ouGwmUVp
— John Otte (@JohnWOtte) September 29, 2016
#WIPJoy | Day 30 What’s my story about again? “A young actor impersonates a lost princess to save her kingdom from a tyrant.”
— John Otte (@JohnWOtte) September 30, 2016
So tune in next week to see if I can maintain the momentum even with taking a day off.