So the stats are in and, while I’ve had some decent writing successes over the year, 2019 was a notably less productive year than 2018.
Before we get to the [boring] stats, here are the highlights:
- I wrote (and completed) 4 brand new short stories;
- I re-edited and/or completed an additional 8 short stories;
- I wrote the first 25,000 words of a new novel
The not-so-highlights include:
- 2 stories were started but not completed;
- The other novel that I started back in 2018 still stands unfinished at 34,000 words (though I did, at least, do a fair bit of work on it this year);
- I had honestly expected to wrap up the first draft of the new novel by this point
So, I’m happy to take the victories—any writing done is good progress—but I would have liked to have seen at least one of the novels not finish the year in a state of limbo.
The stats
I record (with varying accuracy) my word counts each day, along with whether I’ve written new words, edited existing words, or not done any writing at all. I’ve been doing this for a few years now, which means I can look at the trends year on year and learn a few things about my writing habits.
Here are the writing stats:
| Month | Write Total | Writing Days | Average |
| 2019 totals | 44,142 | 116 | 381 |
| 2018 totals | 91,589 | 143 | 640 |
| 2017 totals | 34,679 | 65 | 534 |
| 2016 totals | 46,717 | 72 | 649 |
| 2015 totals | 85,548 | 118 | 725 |
Straight up it’s clear that it’s not been a great year for writing new words. With a reasonable degree of confidence I can surmise that the much higher stats for 2015 and 2018 come down to me being focused on writing (yet not finishing) novels. Yes, I was also working on novels in 2019, but at a much slower pace.
So, the number of days I spent writing in 2019 was pretty good, but my average word count was way down. Clearly either distraction, or lack of inspiration and/or motivation were issues here.
Side note: another reason the 2018 total is much higher is that I decided to include words written for my blog that year (which would still only account for another 25-30k words max). From 2019 I continued to record when I wrote for my blog (as in it still gets counted as a writing day) but I don’t record the word counts (because I want the word counts to be entirely about my fiction writing). This, obviously, makes the average word count a bit lower.
Now let’s look at the editing stats:
| Edit Total | Editing Days | Average | |
| 2019 totals | 91,782 | 105 | 874 |
| 2018 totals | 93,770 | 97 | 967 |
| 2017 totals | 91,508 | 97 | 943 |
| 2016 totals | 147,547 | 142 | 1,039 |
| 2015 totals | 130,865 | 103 | 1,271 |
It’s impossible to properly estimate how many words get edited in any given session, so I simply take the final word count for whatever chunk of prose I’ve worked on that day. Sometimes that total will include new words that I’ve written, and sometimes it will include big chunks of text that I’ve deleted. Either way, since I typically do two further drafts of each story, the editing word count usually ends up being twice that of the writing word count. Maths, yo.
Again, not my most productive year by a long shot, but consistent with the writing stats.
Finally, stats for the number of days in the year that I’ve worked on my writing projects (whether writing or editing)
| Total Crunched | Total Days | Days Missed | |
| 2019 totals | 135,924 | 221 | 144 |
| 2018 totals | 185,359 | 240 | 125 |
| 2017 totals | 126,187 | 162 | 203 |
| 2016 totals | 194,264 | 214 | 161 |
| 2015 totals | 216,413 | 221 | 144 |
Based on those figures, it’s been an average year. It’s never going to come close to being every day, since I don’t make myself write every single day. For starters, I usually take Saturday off, which means I miss 52 days right from the outset. Then there’ll always be days when I’m sick, or simply too tired to write, or am otherwise not in a position to write (e.g. away on holiday). All the same, I’d like to miss fewer days in future.
Which brings us to …
2020 Targets
For 2020 (and, in fact, for the first time) I’ve decided to set myself some targets in the interests of staying on track and improving on some of the 2019 figures. Those targets are:
- Total words written: 55k words
- Average words written per day: 600 words
- Total words edited: 100k words
- Average words edited per day: 1,000 words
- Days spent writing/editing: 260 days (min)
- Days missed: 90 (max)
Those targets don’t necessarily correlate (mathematically) with one another, but each gives me room for improvement (without being ludicrously overambitious) and, to be honest, I’ll be happy if I meet, or exceed, just two or three of them.
Making it work
There’s no point having targets if there’s no plan for achieving them, so here are a few things I’m going to do in order to [help] make it all happen:
- Get up early. I’ve written about this fairly extensively elsewhere on the blog, but one of the biggest issues I had last year was that my morning routine changed and I ended up with less time in the mornings to write. I was able to correct this towards the end of the year simply by getting up earlier. This proved to be much easier than expected, so I anticipate this making a big difference for the new year.
- No phone. I’ve noticed, particularly of late, that I tend to reach for my phone as soon as my mind starts wandering during my writing sessions. Once that happens, it’s all too easy to get sucked into social media and get even more distracted from writing words. So, one of the things I’ll be doing this year is removing that potential source of distraction by ensuring my phone is always out of reach whenever I’m writing.
- Always write. This will be the hardest to implement. I have a reasonably good sense for when the words simply aren’t going to happen, and typically don’t force myself to write when I know it’s basically going to be mental torture. That said, I’ve probably gone a little too easy on myself over the last year so I’m going to take a more disciplined approach. Even on the bad days, if I can just sit down for 15 minutes and get a handful of words written, it’ll still be better than getting nothing done.
And, of course, I will continue to track my word counts through the year so we can all come back and do this again in 12 months’ time. See you then 😉