Targets and Milestones

Back at the start of December, my previous post detailed my desire to write the equivalent of 1,000 words a day during a year. Hidden in that post was the fact that I was approaching a million words written in total across all my different books, both factual and fiction. Indeed, 948,000 words according to the count in Microsoft Word.

I'd also suggested that I might get somewhere around 250,000 for the 2025 year at the end. Those few quiet days spent here in the flat over the festive period actually managed to lift this total up to 272,000. This is a total that I was actually delighted with, all things considered.

I'm also very pleased with the fact that I've managed to complete the entirety of The Leopard Watches in basically three months. Well, the file timestamp tells me it was created on 24th of September, so around 100 days from start to finish. I'm really not trying to race through anything, but it shows I was consistently doing 700-800 words for the period.

Even more interesting is that I've kept going. Actually, I've accelerated. Emerald of the East was created on the 3rd of January. That's 18,650 words in just eleven days. Keep that up for a year and I'll do half-a-million!

And the point of all this? Well, there are actually two points that I want to mention.

Firstly, apparently, targets do keep me motivated. I made a post about needing to be more active with my writing and this seems to have allowed me to get right back into it.

Secondly, my "lifetime" total has clicked over the 1,000,000 words written mark. It's a personal milestone, to be sure, but I'm still glad that I've done it.