I’m back to working on something other than editing and marketing again, and feeling like I need a little extra motivation. I know this is dreadfully boring reading, but posting my daily progress seems to help me gather and maintain momentum, so here it is.

Best 1-day writing total: 12,321 words (Nov 2013)
Best 1-week (6 days) writing total: 50,059 words (Jul 2014)

The Desolation (Dystopian 5) from here down:

The Founder (Dystopian 4) from here down:
12-18-15 5,168 Which finishes the rough draft for The Founder. This brings me up to 23,903 for the week not including any writing I might get done tomorrow (Saturday)
12-17-15 2,106
12-16-15 4,821
12-15-15 7,449
12-14-15 4,359
12-12-15 2,522 I don’t remember why I faded so badly at the end of this week, but it looks like I came in at 16,250 for the week. Quite a bit below where I’d like to hit each week.
12-11-15 1,492 It’s been long enough since I updated this that I don’t remember why this day was such a small number.
12-10-15 4,591 I’m closing in on the end of this one, so things should be picking up more than they are, but at least I’m still making steady progress. 🙂
12-9-15 4,511
12-8-15 No writing–I spent the whole day getting the accounting caught up so that I could talk estimated numbers with my tax accountant.
12-7-15 3.134
12-5-15 4,126 Not the 6k day I started out shooting for, but the total for the week was pretty good. 🙂
12-4-15 5,939 I’m pretty pleased with the day overall. In addition to nearly hitting 6k words for the day, I managed to get several non-writing tasks taken care of (including loading up pre-order versions of Stone Heart to several of the vendors), so it was an unusually productive day.
12-3-15 4,541
12-2-15 4,102
12-1-15 4,874 I wish I could say after two decent writing days that I’m back in the swing of things, but I’m struggling a bit with this part of the book. Hopefully I can get some momentum going again.
11-30-15 5,101 The last day of NaNoWriMo, so I tried to put in an extra effort. This brings me up to just under 68,000 words in November, which isn’t great, but better than it could have been given how long it’s been since I did any significant writing and the fact that Thanksgiving threw me off of my regular schedule.
11-28-15 1,180
11-27-15 1,304
11-26-15 3,073
11-24-15 558 The day was spent doing marketing and print proofing, so not a lot of new words to show for the time I worked.
11-23-15 A spring on our garage door broke last night, and getting that squared away today threw off the whole day. I responded to some emails, got some editing done on Jess & Wyatt’s book, picked up Daughter #1 from school, got an email sent out to my mailing list, did some marketing stuff, and found someone to get the garage door fixed, but didn’t ever get any writing done. I sat down about 9 pm to do so, and then had problems with my desktop, which meant that I wasn’t going to be able to dictate. Given that, I decided to try and finish up Amy’s edits on Jess & Wyatt’s book rather than spend the time trying to write given that I’m much slower typing than I am dictating. I have a feeling this is going to be a long week.
11-21-15 3,858
11-20-15 3,359
11-19-15 3,804
11-18-15 3,530
11-17-15 6,467 (I managed to get some more marketing and even a little bit of editing done around the writing–a very productive day.)
11-16-15 3,696
11-13-15 3,818
11-12-15 4,536 (I haven’t been doing a very good job keeping this updated, but I’ve got the last few days entered in now, and I’ll try to do a better job going forward.)
11-11-15 3,853
11-10-15 3,845 The 9th was spent trying to get marketing/editing/computer and phone maintenance type stuff done.
11-7-15 3,100

The Warlord (Dystopian 3) from here down:
11-6-15 2,391 I finished up Dystopian 3. I also did another 1,752 in an outline, and did a decent chunk of marketing prep work.
11-5-15 3,768 I spent the day sick with the flu, so I’m pretty happy with that word-count total.
11-4-15 6,120 I ran out of steam at the end of the night or I could have added another thousand or so words.
11-3-15 589 words and finished up the editing pass on Jess and Wyatt’s book.
11-2-15 Another editing day. I’m almost there–I should get it done early enough tomorrow to get some writing done around my other obligations.
10-31-15 Another editing day.
10-30-15 No writing today. I decided to focus on editing and see if I could get Jess & Wyatt’s book knocked out and off to Amy before NaNoWriMo started.
10-29-15 3,553 No editing today. A bit of marketing and some time with the family. We carved the girls’ first pumpkin today, which was a lot of fun. It’s a good thing Katie is around to make sure we do those kinds of fun things from time to time!
10-28-15 3,576 I spent several hours working on some IT stuff, but still managed to edit a few more pages of Jess and Wyatt’s book.
10-27-15 3,465 I also got some marketing groundwork laid and did a little bit of editing on Jess and Wyatt’s book.
10-26-15 841 I’m hoping to make a better showing tomorrow.
10-24-15 3,092 Not a great day, but some tough life stuff going on. I did also get some spade work done on a marketing project as well.
10-23-15 6,340 words across a number of sessions. Not much else done during the day, but still a decent bit of progress.
10-22-15 1,870 words in one session. A fair amount of time was also spend responding to email.

DR#5 from here down:

Week Ending:
11-25-14 5,623 (Short week because I finished the book. I’m very happy how this one turned out! I didn’t end up clocking really big numbers, but I managed to get through a couple of different editing passes on a couple of different books along with getting my first multi-author bundle up, so it was a good month.)
11-22-14 20,567
11-15-14 22,386
11-8-14 23,216
11-1-14 4,635 (Just one day. It was the first day of NaNoWriMo, and it was a Saturday, so I put a little extra effort in and spent some time at the local write in (even though I didn’t end up seeing any other writers there).)

Project NS3 from here down:

Week Ending:
10/31/14 (short week because I finished NS#3 today) 15,262 (Tomorrow I start NaNoWriMo again. I have scads of important projects that still need done, so I really should just stick to my 20k per week schedule, but I suspect that I’ll have a little bit of a hard time with that, so don’t be surprised if I put up some bigger numbers this month 🙂
10/25/14 19,896
10/18/14 19,632

So interestingly enough, now that I’m writing 6 days a week with no off month, there isn’t as much of a need to post my numbers here to motivate myself to get started writing when I start a new book. I’m going to continue to post numbers for a little while at least, but I’ll just post the weekly totals, which should be ~20k each week.

10/11/14 3,510 (total for the week is 20,209)
10/10/14 4,741
10/9/14 3,088
10/8/14 3,760
10/7/14 3,768
10/6/14 1,342
10/4/14 2,803 (This brings the total for the week up to 20,338 and the total for the book so far up to 42,851.)
10/3/14 4,195
10/2/14 3,859
10/1/14 5,671
9/29/14 3,810
9/27/14 7,163 (This brings me up to 22.5 k for the week).
9/25/14 6,265
9/24/14 2,922
9/23/14 3,014 (My speed dropped a bit tonight, but still very good results for the amount of time actually sitting in front of the keyboard typing. Here’s to hoping that this book comes together easily 🙂
9/22/14 3,149 (So I’m well into my ‘write every month, just smaller goals’ program. So far I haven’t felt the huge anxiety so common when I’m starting a new project. So from that angle it seems to be a success. I’m also finding that I do indeed seem to be most productive in the evening, so I get more writing done in less time after the girls go to bed. Now I just need to see how well I manage to keep up with all of the non-writing tasks)

Project NS2 from here down:
9/17/14 8,067 (And this one is done! It weighed in at 69k words and was done over 13 working days (15 calendar days). That’s an average of 5,300 words per day, so not too shabby. The question will be whether I can keep that up while editing.)
9/16/14 4,236
9/15/14 6,329(Not a bad day. I’m hoping that I can finish this one up tomorrow, or barring that at least by the end of the day on Wed.)
9/13/14 672 (Nope, not a typo. Rough day for a few reasons. I got a fair amount of work done, but not much writing. A day well spent thought.)
9/12/14 5,526 (Wow, juts wow. Lots of good stuff got done today. I ended up staying awake an extra hour and a half longer than I’d intended getting to it all. It got in the way of getting new words done, but I still managed to get quite a bit written. It feels like I’m closing in on the end of this one, so hopefully I’ll be able to finish it up on Monday or Tuesday.)
9/11/14 6,672 (I don’t even remember what happened yesterday. Not a bad day writing though.)
9/10/14 6,142 (Plus another 216 words added to the outline. More work done for the bundle as well as other administrative stuff.)
9/9/14 5,101 (I really should push forward and try to get one more writing session in–maybe even make it to 6k words today, but I’m exhausted. Some minor progress with the multi-author bundle, but not enough ‘non-writing’ stuff to justify a lower word count today. In case you can’t tell, I’m a bit nervous about this new schedule. Knowing that I had to get a book done every other month was a great motivator.)
9/8/14 5,939 (Today included ticking off several other items off of my to-do list (prepwork for an upcoming multi-author bundle, pulling some reports, and uploading Lost to Apple for preorder), so I felt pretty good overall about what I managed to accomplish. I also got to spend a bit more than an hour talking to someone who is hoping to write their first book over the next little while. I sincerely hope that he manages to get his book finished and then goes on to have a great career!)
9/6/14 5,640 (I also got 404 words added to my outline, so it was really a 6k word day. Not a bad day–I just need to get better about getting the non-word count items ticked off of my to-do list.)
9/5/14 3,780 (My wonderful wife took me out for a night on the town and a movie back at home, so not as much writing accomplished today, but it was still a good day 🙂
9/4/14 5,539 (Not the best day, but not the worst either.)
9/3/14 6,585 (I’ve been really stressing out for the last few days because I knew I needed to start writing my next book this week. The original plan was to start on Monday, but I just couldn’t get myself to do it. Instead I ended up going back and editing Project ‘NS’ so I’d be in a better place with regards to picking the series back up. So essentially I procrastinated for two days. I was procrastinating with projects that needed done, but it was still procrastinating. This morning I managed to put together a very rough outline and I went on to write a total of 6.5k words when you add the 1,200 or so words of the outline. Not a screaming pace, but very respectable, especially for my first day back. I’m starting to think that having long periods of time off between books is a very bad thing. I finished November’s book last year very quickly so I had more than 5 weeks off before starting Isaac’s book in January, and I really struggled with that one too. I’m considering swapping up my schedule so that I write a little bit less each day, and fill the evenings with the editing and other stuff that normally takes up my ‘off’ month.)

‘Project NS’ from here down:
7/21/14 1,024 (Things didn’t go at all like I planned for them to. I woke up thinking that I was going to need to race if I was going to get the next 20-30k worth of story finished up before the end of the month. I’d ended Saturday night with the closing scenes of a big conflict, and had two more big sets of drama that I figured needed to go into the story to end things the way that I wanted to. Only I spun my wheels for a while this morning and in the end decided that the story would actually best ended right where I was. So that’s it. This book is done. It came in at a total of 108k words written over the course of 15 full days (disregarding the first and last days which were mostly consumed by other projects. So in round numbers you could say that I wrote this one in 16 working days–not bad, but not a pace I could keep up for very long. Now I’m off to a bunch of other projects and to take another stab at the June status update that I could never quite get right. In other news, this brings be up to more than 1,990,000 words of fiction written, of which 1,280,000 has been published.)
7/19/14 7,188 (So another good day writing. This brought my total for the week to just under 36k, which means that I averaged almost 6k/day.)
7/18/14 6,858 (The one or two people who check up on this thing are probably wondering what happened. Monday (the 14th) was a low number because I had a ton of things that needed caught up on because I let most everything slide last week. Since then I’ve struggled with a bit of burn out. Katie has already ‘told me so’. I really did know that I was pushing too hard last week, but that’s the way that I’m wired. I had a chance to break a personal best, to accomplish something I haven’t ever accomplished before, so I went after it. So far this week I’m at 28k despite my motivation issues, and I’m within spitting distance of 100k in the book in total. My hopes of a 70-80k manuscript have pretty much gone out the window, which is a bummer because it means I end up spending a lot more time writing but unless I start charging more for the longer books (which I’m reluctant to do) then I end up working a lot more for the same royalty as I do on a book that is 2/3rd the length. It’s all good the story takes as long as it takes to do it the right way and I just have to hope that it works out in the end. I’m betting this one will be at least 120k words, and it wouldn’t surprise me for it to go as much as 140k.)
7/17/14 4,314
7/16/14 9,230
7/15/14 5,436
7/14/14 2,927
7/12/14 8,903 (I’m exhausted, but I managed to do it. My total words written this week (Monday through Saturday is 50,059, which is a new one-week record as it beats my previous record of 44,575 which was set in Mar 2014. I suspect at some point I’ll probably to another run at this record, but hopefully not for a while. I’m now up to a bit over 71k words written on this novel, and I’m very much hoping to be able to wrap it up next week. I’m currently on the fence a little about where I go next with it. I think I’ll probably go ahead and take the route that finishes the story more quickly because I think it will make for a stronger ending and better pacing leading up to that point, but I guess we’ll just have to see what ends up happening. The book continues to flow well from a writing standpoint–here’s hoping that the finished product ends up being entertaining.)
7/11/14 7,916 (I woke up today with a sore throat, but pressed on working until midnight to get withing shouting distance of my 8k goal for the day. Tomorrow is shaping up like a challenging writing day, which is too bad because right now I’m within ~3,400 words of my record for the best writing week ever. I’d really like to break that record, and have let a lot of things slide this week in order to try an set myself up to have a shot at breaking it (sorry, Heather, I promise that I’ll slow down next week and get that advance reader copy edited up and out to you. I’m still hoping that I’ll be able to get a good 6k or so written around all of the interruptions and be able to set a solid new record, but we’ll just have to see how things go. This book continues to flow well, and I’m very glad that I decided to write it this month instead of something else–but more on that later.)
7/10/14 7,891 (I didn’t get quite as much done as I’d hoped today, but I went to bed at midnight anyway in the hopes that I could avoid getting sick.)
7/9/14 9,021 (Wow, what a day. More challenges on the writing front, but I’ve finally realized that when interruptions happen it just makes me dig my heels in and write harder & longer in an effort to make up for lost time. I think I feel like if I can’t hit my goals in the midst of the ‘life’ stuff that happens from time to time, that it will become too easy to just find reasons not to hit them even when there isn’t as good of a reason not to hit them. So late last night I was pushing hard to finish up the 8k words that I was hoping to get for the day. I got there about midnight and hit the little red x at the top of my word document to close it out so I could go to bed. Only as the little warning screen asking if I wanted to save it or not popped up, I realized that I really ought to make a few notes about where I thought the scene was going so that it would be easier to get started on the 10th. Like and idiot, instead of hitting cancel (ie don’t close out the program) I hit no (don’t save my changes). I’m surprised that I didn’t wake Katie and the girls with the ‘NO!!!’ that escaped me at that point. I loaded up my last save and found out that I’d lost ~3,800 words or basically what I’ve long thought of as being a reasonable full day’s effort (based on the word counts I’ve put up lately I could probably revise that figure up some, but 4k is a decent number to hit still on a day where things just don’t seem to want to come together). Having lost almost half of what I’d done for the day made me want to cry, but then I found this link: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/mssmallbiz/archive/2012/04/20/how-to-recover-that-un-saved-microsoft-office-excel-word-or-powerpoint-file-you-closed-before-saving.aspx which explained that there was an option for recovering unsaved changes to a document if your version of word was set up correctly. Luckily my version was indeed set up correctly and I was able to recover 3600 of the 3800 lost words. Thank goodness. I set about recreating the stuff that I’d lost, and shut down about 1 a.m. with my best one-day total so far. I feel bad. The list of non-writing stuff that I need to get done continues to pile up, but when I’m on this kind of streak I have a hard time stopping and switching gears because I’m always worried that will throw me off my game and when I come back to the book it will be harder to finish it up.)
7/8/14 8,101 (Another challenging day, but I persisted late into the night in an effort to make sure that I didn’t fall behind. If I could keep this pace up I would be able to set a new one-week writing record, but I don’t actually expect to be able to manage that. If nothing else Saturday will be a less productive day, but maybe I’ll be able to make enough up over the rest of the week to come close to my record of 44k from this last March. Hopefully this book comes in between 70k and 80k, if so then there’s a good chance I could finish it up next week, which would open up the possibility of starting another book right away and getting a total of 7 books done this year.)
7/7/14 8,227 (There were some challenges today and I stayed up too late again, just like Saturday, but all in all it was a good day of writing. I would love to be able to maintain this pace for the rest of the week, but I suspect that would be overly ambitious given some of the non-writing things that need done and the fact that I really need to finish up my blurb for Ambushed so that I can get it uploaded to iBooks since they have the longest lead time.)
7/5/14 6,253 (Another decent day. Book is still flowing well. It’s the end of the week so I’ll report the total so far which is a bit over 21k written on the rough draft.)
7/4/14 7,209 (Another good day. Starting to feel a little tired though from trying to keep the words rolling along around all of the other life commitments. Hopefully this story continues to flow like it has been.)
7/3/14 6,433 (Not a bad day. I got some exercising in, watched a little TV with Katie, and took a break for an hour or so to go watch the fireworks with Katie and the girls. I stayed up a little later than normal, but nothing drastic. This book is progressing surprisingly well all things considered. Hopefully it continues to move along smoothly, and it is closer to 80k than 100k (or 120k like the last few have been).)
7/2/14 1,192 (I spent yesterday working through edits for Shattered, and woke up today without a clear idea of what I was going to write. I spent most of the day trying to put together an outline. It’s now up to 1,799 words and I think it’s good enough to justify starting on the book. So a very slow start to Project NS. I’m essentially starting two days late on what I already know is going to be a tough project. Please keep your fingers crossed for me.)

Post-Riven Alec and Adri from here down:

5/23/14 5,693 (It’s done. This book was a huge struggle and comprises nearly 113k words written over 21 working days. I’ve had my doubts as I’ve been writing this one, but the writing the ending today felt right in ways that I don’t get to experience very often. I’m excited for you all to read it.)
5/22/14 5,633 (Still going :\ I’m now up to 107k. Not that long ago I was pretty sure this one would be only ~80k words. Boy was I wrong.)
5/21/14 6,096 (Given the way this book has been going lately, I should have know that I’d face a rough start this morning. All in all, it was a decent day or writing though and I’m definitely closing in on the end. I’m in the middle of the climax and then just have the epilogue to write. Here’s hoping for tomorrow.)
5/20/14 3,319 (Today was mostly a bust as far as writing went, and it wasn’t because I didn’t have the time. I felt a little like the author in Stranger than Fiction who was having such a hard time trying to figure out how to kill her character. I knew where I wanted to go with the story and figured there was even a chance that I could finish it up today, but I just couldn’t figure out how to get there. Stopping now that things are starting to move and I’m in the middle of a fight in the hopes that doing so will mean that I can just dive right in tomorrow.)
5/19/14 6,070 (A better day. Actual manuscript grew by 6,906 because I reused some dialogue from Isaac’s book. That puts the manuscript up to 92k words. I’m thinking there is a very good chance I’ll be able to finish up tomorrow.)
5/17/14 4,833 (I’m officially sick. Not a great week a bit over 28k words, which is 4k (one day) ahead of my official schedule, but a bit less than I actually try for. Still, this book is up to more than 85k words and I think I’ll be able to finish it up sometime next week. I think it will end up being somewhere between 95k and 100k.)
5/16/14 5,431
5/15/14 5,036 (Still lot of non-writing commitments. I probably would have stayed up later writing in an effort to make it closer to 6k, but my wrists are bothering me a bit.)
5/14/14 5,298 (Hopefully a sign of better things to come)
5/13/14 4,479
5/12/14 3,134 (Tough day at the Murray house today. I’m thrilled to have been able to get as much writing done as I did. I’ll be trying to make up for lost time a little tomorrow. Some very exciting developments in the story over the last few days that I didn’t fully see coming until they happened 🙂
5/10/14 2,252 (Other commitments today, but still managed to squeak out a few words. 33k for the week 🙂
5/9/14 6,849 (Still in the dream sequence, but holy cow did it ever take an a life of its own. I really enjoyed this chapter. I got a bit of a late start today, but a good effort nevertheless. Tomorrow I’ll have some other commitments so I expect my totals will be pretty small, but today brings me up to almost 31k for the week, so that’s nothing to complain about. Hopefully I’m over the hump now and the book will pretty much just write itself. Currently sitting at nearly 55k for the book in total.)
5/8/14 6,501 (Lots of struggles with this book as you’re probably noticing if you’re keeping an eye on me daily word counts. Today I wrote a difficult dream sequence. Considering how slowly that section went I’m pretty pleased with how today ended up word count wise.)
5/7/14 5,854
5/6/14 6,002 (Lots of unexpected changes in direction. I’m very curious how long this book will end up being)
5/5/14 5,739
5/3/14 6,113 (To the end of another week and I’m up to nearly 24k words so far. If I can keep this novel down to ~80k words that would mean that I was more than a quarter of the way done after just four days of writing. With my luck it will probably end up being another 120k word book which would mean I’m only 20% of the way done. Given how much the outline has expanded just in the last few days I suspect it’s going to be another longer novel–not sure how I’d fit it all into just 80k words.)
5/2/14 5,411 (Got a surprise as I was writing–things in Chapter 3 took a turn I wasn’t expecting. Big thank you to Katie for pitching in tonight to help me hit as many words as I did. Saturdays are always a little harder on the writing front and we’ve got some other plans for the evening, but I’m hoping to still put in a better day than today. All in all, the fact that I started a day early still means I’m ahead of schedule 🙂
5/1/14 7,159 (Not a bad day. Things should get easier as I get further into the story.)
4/30/14 5,104 (got started a day earlier than my official schedule but 2-3 days later than I’d originally hoped to manage. Not a bad first day total word count.

Dark Reflections #4 from here down:

3/24/14 7,172 (It’s done! 120k words in total over 19 working days/22 calendar days.)
3/22/14 7,317 (I was really hoping to still manage to finish the book this week somehow, but it just wasn’t meant to be. I’m in the middle of the final fight scene though so I think I can manage to finish it up relatively early on Monday. On the plus side though, the words that I wrote today carried me the rest of a way to a new personal best total for one week. Before this my best was a bit over 42k words in 6 days. This week I managed 44,575 words, which is a bit over an average of 7,400 words per day. If I could get back to writing stories that would fit in 80k words like some of my earlier books, then this rate would let me finish up a book in just 2 weeks. I’m pretty thrilled that I’m back to a consistent typing speed with DVORAK that will let me put up these kinds of word totals. It also makes me miss the times when I felt good about just doing 24k words per week. This is a pretty grueling pace for me.)
3/21/14 7,895 (So much for my hopes of getting this book finished up early on in the week. It’s looking pretty unlikely that I’ll manage to get it done until next week at this point. I’m up to nearly 106k now, but just a few last scenes to right, so hopefully I’ll knock it out either some time tomorrow or early an Monday. On the plus side, if anyone is keeping track, today’s figure puts me up to more words this week than I managed in either of the last two weeks–with one more day of the week still to go. Not a bad showing so far.)
3/20/14 8,128 (I’m getting close to being done with this one finally. I think I’ve got 4 or 5 more chapters. I was hoping to have it done the first part of the week, but rather than coming in at 80k like I was hoping it’s looking like it will probably be in the 110k-120k range again. So far I’m at 98k and counting.)
3/19/14 5,105 (Rough day, but my word-count production ended up being a little better than I thought it would be.)
3/18/14 7,645 (Today started out great, but quickly went downhill from there. The 19th is not going to be a very productive day.)
3/17/14 8,485
3/15/14 4,143 (I broke 36k for the week–I’ll take it *grin* Some other stuff has come together over the last few days that I think will have some good long-term results on my sales once I’m able to properly follow up on them. All in all it was a great week and I’m up over 68k words for this book after just two weeks. With any luck I should be able to finish this manuscript up next week.)
3/14/14 8,018 (This brings me up to just over 32k for the week, nearly as much as I did during the course of all of last week. With some hard work and a little bit of luck tomorrow I should be able to put up another good day and come in somewhere in the neighborhood of 40k for the week.)
3/13/14 8,204 (Another good day. For the longest time I’ve said that my daily word-count goal is 4k. That equates to 24k per week and means that I can finish a 100k book in one month. Every time I do 8k in a single day it means that I just bought myself an extra day at the end of the month to catch up on print or whatever else I haven’t been able to make it to.)
3/12/14 7,013
3/11/14 4,073
3/10/14 4,772
3/8/14 8,069 (A good day. Brings the total for the week up to ~32k which is an average of more the 5k words per day across my 6 day work week. A good week under most circumstances, a great week considering how my Friday went. At this rate I have a good chance of finishing up this book before the end of the month so that I can catch up on some other items that need doing.)
3/7/14 1,777 (Rough day. Between a wedding and some other happenings I didn’t get much done)
3/6/14 5,122 (Would have likely ended up somewhere between 6k and 7k for the day if not for needing to get Hunted uploaded to iBooks.)
3/5/14 8,163 (Several good writing sessions. I think that switching to DVORAK has resulted in a slight increase to my average writing speed, but it will take some more time to verify that for sure still).
3/4/14 4,689 (Not my best day, but not too bad considering some of the non-writing commitments that I had during the day.)
3/3/14 4,558 (I spent the day exhausted from travelling over the weekend and had some other things come up. I really struggled with a piece of the writing I did today, so I’m not sure how much of the words will need re-written)

Isaac’s book from here down:

1/31/14 10,916 (The book is now done. Long day of writing and it’s pretty late here, but I didn’t want to stop until I was done. The book is just shy of 120k word, which puts it as the 2nd longest rough draft I’ve written. Glad to have it done, but really enjoyed today especially–some really mind-blowing stuff in this one.)
1/30/14 8,296 (There was a little bit of dialogue that I copied in from another book (that will make more sense later), so this isn’t an apples to apples comparison against yesterday, but it’s a good day nevertheless. Historically I’ve said that if I hit 4k new words in a day that I won’t beat myself up over my production for the day. If I do 4k a day for 6 days a week then I can pretty safely finish up a book a month (assuming it’s less than 96k words). The truth is that lately I’ve been pushing for at least 5k per day because I started late this month and I had a suspicion that this book might run a little long. So far this week I’ve written more than 29k words, which means that I’m more than 13k ahead of my old schedule and that over the last 4 days I’ve made up 3 days of lost ground. This is within 1k of my best 4 day production total, so I’m pretty happy with the way that things are coming together.)
1/29/14 8,010 (Not my best day writing ever (that was 12,321 words), but my best day so far on this novel. I’m getting so close to the end of this book that I just want to keep writing, but hopefully tomorrow will be the day I finish it up. It’s up over 100k now in total.)
1/28/14 6,510 (I’m supposed to be in bed already, but all in all it’s been a good day. Lots of fun on the forum, quality time with Katie and the girls.)
1/27/14 6,605 (A record for production on this book, but a looong ways off of my best day of writing ever. Isaac’s book is still progressing along nicely. Starting to worry though that it might end up being 110k+ words though.)
1/25/14 5,288 (I broke 33k this week in total! Some great progress on Isaac’s book. I hit a tricky spot today, but I think I’m past all of that and it should be smooth sailing from here on out. I’m nearly up to 80k words and it feels like I have ~20k more to go, so this is going to be another longer book, but I still think I can finish it up next week without too much problem.)
1/24/14 5,312
1/23/14 5,934 (Still sick, but not a bad day)
1/22/14 5,067 (I’m sick, but nothing so far that I can’t work through. Great start to the day. Lately I’ve been writing until 10 or 11 to finish up my word counts. Today I hit 5k by 5:30 and thought that I might have another 6k+ day. Some non-writing stuff came up, so no more writing this evening. That’s okay, writing is important, but it isn’t the most important thing out there. On the plus side I exchanged emails with some extra cool fans today 🙂 My typing speed seems consistently back up to where it was before I switched to DVORAK, so that is major progress!
1/21/14 6,024 (Outstanding day despite some distractions along the way. In addition to the writing, I put together the e-mail that will be sent out to the mailing list when Bound goes live and uploaded Bound to the last few retailers. It’s tempting to stay up and try to break 7k for the day, but I stayed up later last night and if I don’t get caught up on my sleep I’ll end up sick, which will put me behind.)
1/20/14 5,703 (Some distractions today, but all in all the best day of production so far on this book.)
1/18/14 5,054 (For anyone that is paying attention that puts me at just over 32k words for the week, which I feel pretty good about. My record for words written in a single week is 42k+, but my typical goal is to write 24k words per week. 24k per week lets me finish a 100k word novel in ~4 weeks, which is roughly what I need to do to write 6 books per year if it takes me one month to do all of the editing and print formatting, etc. That means my production put me 2 full days ahead of schedule (or more realistically helped catch up from my late start this month since I didn’t start writing until the 6th.) Last week weighed in at just under 23k, so that’s good progress forward. I’m currently at just under 48k words on this story in total (the weekly numbers have a short story and some outlining and background writing in them) which means that a really good push next week might be enough to finish it, but it wouldn’t surprise me for it to go at least a little into the following week. All in all a good week. I’ve picked up some good momentum and am making really good progress for how difficult it was to get started with this book.
1/17/14 5,621
1/16/14 5,439 (Not a bad day despite a couple of hours spent doing some ground work for another set of covers we’ll need for future books. I stayed up late to make up for that lost time though. That’s starting to be too frequent, but hopefully my typing speed will continue to improve. I’m 37k words into this book now, excluding background, and outlining. Puts me around the halfway point more than likely.)
1/15/14 5,225 (Some more time spent doing some formatting on an ebook and other stuff that took away from new words, but on the whole a very good day. I’m now caught back up with my schedule and have averaged 4k words per day for the 9 days that I’v been working on this one.  If I can continue to put up 5k+ word days then I shouldn’t have any problems finishing this one by the end of the month–unless it turns out to be a lot longer than I’m anticipating it will be.)
1/14/14 5,168 (good day despite two hours of non-writing stuff in there. Almost feels like my typing speed is starting to come back up a little).
1/13/14 5,636 (decent writing day without too many distractions. Now if my typing speed would just get back up to what it used to be).
1/11/14 4,209 (total production for the week of 21k which is 3k less than my weekly goal, but given the number of random things going on this week, it wasn’t as bad of a showing as I’d feared it might me. On the plus side things seem to be flowing pretty well with this book, so hopefully I can keep the momentum going. No idea how many words this one will ultimately end up being, but if it’s more than 80k then I’ll have to pick up the pace if I’m going to have it done by the end of the month. Big thanks to Katie, she took up a lot of slack around the house this week to give me time to catch up a bit to compensate for some of the craziness that was going on.
1/10/14 1,483 (a poor showing–lots of non-writing tasks again. I hope to make up a little of the shortfall tomorrow but it will be next week before I’ll really have a chance to make up the lost ground)
1/9/14 4,042 (rough day with a significant amount of time spent on tasks other than writing)
1/8/14 4,132 (all progress on Isaac’s book)
1/7/14 4,142 (a flash fiction story, more background and outlining, but I did get most of the way through the first chapter in Isaac’s book)
1/6/14 3,053  (background and outlining words)
Early Jan: 1,771 (background and outlining words)