19 days have come and gone, and I am now 26% percent done with my UF draft with 23,161 words.  Okay, in the grand scheme of things, I am far off  my targeted goal. Yes, I know I’m supposed to be closer to 75% done, but I’m not.  And you know what, I’m good with that.

 Because I am an analytical geek, I made a chart of my daily production.  On a good day, I tend to hover around the 2k mark, and on a bad day, I’m lucky to pull out 500 words.

Then I decided to delve in a bit deeper & get a little more geeky, I came up with the following list of stats that probably don’t mean a thing, other than they tickle the left side of my brain:

So, looking at this I’m seeing my avg daily word count is far below the 3,214 I need it to be. But again, the fact that I am producing any daily word count is a thrill to me.  And apparently, when I have a good day, I have a GOOD DAY-lol!.  Check out that best day stat, 6,796  in one day! I definitely need a few more of those. 

Then, just for S & G’s (& to tickle the left side of my brain more) I wanted to see what my first half of the week production was vs. the last half of the week.  While the numbers are not really statistically relevant, I found it interesting. With Saturday and Sunday writing included with the “last 3 days” figure, I would have expected my production to be really off the chain on the weekends…. Apparently not-LOL   .  But what this does show me is that I am more focused on my writing when I have a finite time during the weekday to write (usually 2-3 hrs only) vs. unlimited time (in theory) on the weekend. I think I procrastinate more on Saturdays & Sundays because “I have plenty of time to write”.

Because I got to thinking about it and couldn’t resist, I made a stacked column graph that shows what I’ve been spending my writing time on the last 19 days:

You know, I am shocked and amazed (no, really I am ) that I have actually spent more time writing than outlining. Me thinks I’ve truly made a break through here. Am I really learning that the best way to finish a novel is to just write the damn book? Hmm, time will tell…

Okay, enough time wasting.  Time for me to get my butt in gear for some writing today. I’m planning on wrapping up Act 1 and then outlining Act 2, hopefully setting a new personal best in the process. 

 
Side Note: as I was writing this, one of my CP’s and I were IM’ing back and forth about being right brained and left brained.  As it turns out, we are both fairly even brained, her more so than me.  I tend to lean towards my left side more, but today I am channelling my right brain. 🙂  This bodes very well for me and my word count goal of over 5K today.  I’m hoping I can even kick on the after burners and do a new personal best today.   7k – 10k would be a very nice addition to my word count. In case you are wondering about all this left brain vs. right brain business, I did a post on it a little while ago with links to two tests you can take. One is a quick visual test, the other a short questionnaire <here>. 

My test results are fairly consistant in that I tend to always be close to the middle, but leaning towards the left side.  I took the quiz again this morning for fun & today I’m 58% left brain, 42% right brain.  I find this quiz accurately describes me as a whole, but to get a sense of which side of my brain is peaking at any given moment, the visual test is key.  Today I woke up with the overwhelming urge to knock out the rest of Act 1–via fast draft, so I could work on my Act 2 outline.  A quick look at the visual & it told me that  my right brain is actually peaking now.  Good timing I’d say.  The right brain is the side that deals with the big picture side of things better.