While living and working in Edinburgh in 2008 I set out to write one million words in 366 days... but only managed 800,737.

Monday, August 25, 2008

Status Report: Week Thirty-Four

Week Thirty-Four – The Stats

Weekly Wordcount: 18,199 words (compared to 12,978 words last week) (the highest weekly total for over two months)
Average: 2,600 words per day (compared to target of 3,001/day -- so still a ways off)
Most productive day: Monday 18 August, 4,494 words
Least productive day: Wednesday 20 August, 1,156 words
Year-to-date: 548,742 words (98,789 words behind target)

I surprised myself a bit last week. I was consigned to falling over 100,000 words behind target, but an explosion of words early on in the week has delayed that indignity... temporarily

I also wrote August off as a month of doing things rather than writing things, but it seems the two are not (always) mutually exclusive.

As this graph illustrates…

… a lot of last week’s words were devoted to short fiction. That’s because I’ve gone back to the problem short stories which are holding up my collection and cut away paragraphs and pages like they were someone else’s work (sometimes I think of myself two months ago as my enemy -- it helps me be ruthless with his work) and refilled the stories with all the greatness I had to hand at the time. Of course, in two months time, the August me will be the enemy and I will be tempted to cut it all back to the roots again…

It’s like Nam Le said at his session yesterday: Writing a short story collection is like painting a bridge. By the time you get to the end, the side you started from needs another coat.

Anyway. I feel like I’m being productive at the moment. Trying not to think about what the deficit will look like after we move flats and spend a week in Greece in September.

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