Well, yesterday I reached the official halfway point… And I’m currently only 3,400 words behind my goal!!!! *Celebration dance* *Throws flowers in the air*

I never planned on rewards for this challenge. Writing almost 180,000 words in six months feels like accomplishment enough. Especially when I have a near full-time day job, two crazy monsters and one crazy cat to look after the rest of the time. Let’s be honest, it can be very difficult most days. But this goal has taught me so much, even though I’m only halfway through. For instance, I’ve learned that I CAN write 1,000 words a day every day if I really set my mind to it, though writing over 600 words feels like a challenge on the busy days, but is really easy on the weekends (unless it is a jam-packed fun weekend of ice fishing).

This past week was a great week. I even had one 3,000 word day that I wasn’t expecting, though it was on a side project instead of the main project I’m working on drafting, which is MF. A lot of my word count lately comes from rewriting Under Jupiter. Since I drafted UJ about ten years ago, there is a lot of rewriting to do. I’m a much stronger writer now, and have an easier time picking out the plot gaps and character weaknesses that need to be filled in. In other words, there are a lot of missing words. Here’s a shot of my tracking sheet for the past week. You can also see that there were a couple days slightly under the 1,000 words. But at least I averaged out well!

When I set this massive goal back in September, I said I would be focusing on five major projects, and nothing else. That goal has definitely changed, though I did initially wrap up the Black Depths Universe, which was one of the projects. I’m currently working on drafting MF, which for now all I will say is an adult fantasy novel. The rewriting project, Under Jupiter, wasn’t initially budgeted for, because I didn’t take into account all the effort of rewriting, and all the new words I would be adding. These words will likely only count for the rewriting process, and when I get into third and forth drafts, that word count will disappear and I will have to go back to drafting new things to get my 1,000 words a day. After I finish drafting MF, I’m hoping to write a new adult fantasy. I’m pretty excited for this but I don’t think I’ll get around to it until at least June, and that will probably be the last project of this year long goal, and hopefully by then I’ll be at my 365,000 words.

So, while I wasn’t planning on getting myself rewards, I feel that this halfway point is deserving of a little something, mostly because there is still a long way to go! I’m thinking a book or a chocolate bar or something. Nothing big. Just a little something to put an even bigger smile on my face.

How is your writing going?

JEH