As Long As I'm Writing

Monday, August 1, 2016

Written by Kodi Wolf at 7:14 PM

July was my weirdest writing month yet. It was also the best, which I didn't think it would be at first. For the first two weeks, I kept trying to force myself to work on Lights of Life with little success. I wasn't sure if it was because I was coming off a long weekend with my wife for the 4th of July holiday (and I'm not talking about drinking, I don't drink, I just mean getting to relax with my wife, so I was in 'chill' mode), or if I was still dealing with the effects of my flu-like period, or what, but I just couldn't get into the writing. For those first 14 days, my average daily word count was only 227.

Then I realized what I really wanted was to be working on a sex story. I thoroughly enjoyed all the work I did on Warrior Slave in June and my head was still there, though not necessarily with that story. That's when I started working on A Bondage Primer, and holy shit, did my word count go up. For the last 17 days of July, my average daily word count was 2,455.

Even with those first two weeks of less than stellar numbers, I still ended up with a total word count of 44,922, which averages out to 1,449 words per day. My lowest words per day was 1 and my highest was 6,169. (The '1' day was for revisions, where I cut as much as I added.)

Out of those nearly 45,000 words, almost 35,000 were for story text, which works out to about 84 pages. I've actually completed Days 11-14 and I'm all set up to start Day 15 (they're not posted yet, I need to make a few more revisions and then get them sent off to my beta-readers).

So, even though I didn't necessarily achieve my goal of finishing up the outline for Lights, I've decided that as long as I'm writing, it doesn't matter. I'm not going to beat myself up for writing 45,000 words just because it was on a different story than I intended.

My goal for August is to just keep riding this wave for as long as it lasts. I've done a ton of brainstorming for ABP with my wife these past couple months, and I have a really clear idea of where I'm going with the story overall now. I have specific milestones for the story's progression, so what seemed like an insurmountable task before, now feels completely doable. I feel like I have a roadmap now, so I only have to brainstorm little snippets to get from point A to point B within the larger story structure, and that has made a big difference. Plus, my wife is enjoying the story as much as I am, so I have plenty of encouragement to keep writing until I finish a scene so I can send it to her for a first beta.

Here's hoping for another successful month of writing. (My secret goal is to hit 50,000 words, since that would be equivalent to a NaNo month and I haven't completed one of those yet.)