Wordcount Wednesday

This has been an interesting week.

When I set out working on my newest project (still entitled #GottaBeBae), I set a rather lofty goal for myself. This year, I am once again going to be speaking at the One Year Adventure Novel workshop in mid-June. I always have a blast when I do this. Granted, I’ve only done it for two years now, but the trend is strong.

Well, due to my family’s summer schedule, I got it into my head that I should really try to finish up my first draft of #GottaBeBae by the time the workshop starts. That means that, as of this writing, I have approximately 25 days to finish up. When I first got started, I did the math (a scary prospect for me!) and realized that, if this was supposed to be 80,000 words long, I’d have to write approximately 2,500 words a day to do it. That’s a bit ambitious, but maybe do-able.

Now I include that “maybe” because, while I’m hopeful, I’m trying to temper it with realism. I’ve been able to chisel out the time to get the 2,500 words in, but I know that in the coming weeks, finding that time will likely be more difficult. And this only really works if I can stick to my goal of 80,000 words, and I’m notorious for blowing past those upper limits and making things longer than they need to be in first drafts.

But we’ll see. As of right now, the manuscript is clocking in at 30,348 words, meaning that I added 18,920 words in the last week.

That’s insane. It’s one of the best writing weeks I’ve ever had.

And I’m going to try something even crazier this week. A few years back, author Tosca Lee kind of threw down a challenge to authors to try to do a 10,000 word day. She even has t-shirts we can get if we succeed:

I’m not so sure I’ll get the shirt, but I’m definitely going to try to earn it. This Friday, I’m going to try to write 10,000 words in one day. That’s going to skew my weekly averages just a little if I succeed, and there’s no guarantee that I will. But dang it, I definitely want to try.

I even spent some time plotting out the next several chapters of my WIP so I wouldn’t have to stop and think about where the story had to go next…

So had a productive brainstorming session last night. Got a new week’s worth of chapters to write! . #authorsofinstagram #writerslife #writersofinstagram #amwriting #amwritingfantasy #amwritingromance

A post shared by John Otte (@otte.jw) on May 12, 2018 at 7:01am PDT

I’ll keep people up-to-date on my Instagram account on Friday, so give me a follow if you want to keep track of the fun!