Stats
Average Daily Wordcount (Week 17 Only): 6,122
Week 17 Total Wordcount: 42,860
Average Daily Wordcount (December): 2,763
December Total Wordcount: 85,660
Year Total Wordcount: 360,642
Words to go:
Year: 639,358
Previous Milwordy Wrap Ups: September. October. November.
I’m calling the first third of the Milwordy challenge a success.
You heard me…read me…I am officially 1/3rd of the way through Milwordy and I’m actually ahead of schedule as far as word count goes.
I think one of the biggest things I learned about myself this month is that I tend to judge my success in an endeavor, not by my actual progress, but by how I feel about it. You see, I got way behind in December…sort of. I never actually dropped behind on my year-long goal because I had gotten such a head start in September and October. But I was, at one point, nearly 20k behind on my December goal, and in spite of being on track for the total Milwordy goal, I felt like such a failure. I began panicking that I was going to lose this challenge after having worked hard for nearly 4 months.
And then I had a 23k word day.
Oh yeah, you read that right, 23k words.
Looking back, that was a ridiculous thing to do. I mean, the chances of those 23k words being any good are miniscule. It doesn’t totally matter, because much of it was discovery writing/brainstorming work anyway, so it didn’t have to be good…it just had to help me learn more about my characters and plot. Still, why did I feel the need to do that?
Because I didn’t want to feel like a failure. Also, because I’m obsessed with my Milwordy spreadsheet and the way that the cell for each month’s total word count will only turn to (my favorite) purple if I hit my goal and I couldn’t bear to miss a month. Yeah, I know, weird motivation, but seriously would it be right to leave it red?
So, I scrambled to get as many words in one day as I possibly could. I didn’t even know it was possible for me to get that many words in one day, and admittedly, I probably wouldn’t have been able to do it if I hadn’t been using a dictation app. There’s no way my wrists could handle 23k words in a day. They can barely handle 3k.
The thing is, I need to learn not to be so hard on myself. I mean, I need to be a little hard on myself in order to do a challenge like this. If I’m too lenient, I know from experience, I will not finish it. However, there really was no reason for me to feel so badly about my progress this month that I needed to write 23k words in one day. So, I’ll be working on that.
Maybe.
I’ll start with saying that in December I managed, not only to reach my monthly goal and have the largest word count day I’ve had in my entire life (by a wide margin), but I also managed to finish my NaNoWriMo novel, restart an old novel that I’m absolutely in love with, write a whopping 42k worth of discovery writing for a brand-new project, and keep up with this blog (barely). That’s all pretty good as far as productivity goes and something to be proud of (even if saying that I should be proud of it gives me a sense of embarrassment and discontent—working on it).
Not only am I headed into the 5th month of Milwordy, but we’re all headed into a new year. It’s a time for fresh starts. Let’s all agree to let our 2020 baggage go as much as possible and work toward a brighter future!
Did you get a lot done in December? How about 2020 as a whole? I know it was a rough year—for basically the whole world—but I hope that you were able to make the most of it. And I hope that we’re all about to have an amazing 2021!
-Robin
Rambling Robin 