My Writing Stats for 2016

Sunday, January 1, 2017

Written by Kodi Wolf at 1:19 AM

December turned out to be a lot like July. For the first two weeks, my word count was really low. I only averaged about 397 words per day, but that was due to being on drugs while I passed a couple kidney stones. Once I got off the meds, my average word count more than doubled to about 871 words per day, and that was even with the holidays and finally getting to the cleaning I'd wanted to do last December, but which ended up not happening because I got sick instead (and no, I didn't get to it the whole rest of the year... I was busy writing).

My total word count for December was 20,364, which averages out to 657 words per day. My lowest words per day was 13 and my highest was 2,138.

Looking back, this year has been amazing. I can't believe I've been able to maintain my writing streak, which I started back on January 9 of last year. Here's an updated look at my calendar for 2016.

My corkboard with my writing calendar. You can also see my favorite inspirational note I wrote for myself in 2013 and the black knife (called a karambit) that I bought as inspiration for a much later scene in A Bondage Primer. And the little scroll piece in the corner says, "Once Upon a Time..."
(Full-size image)

My main goal for this year is to have every day marked with a green 'X' by the end of the year. I don't know if I'll be able to do it, since I know health stuff derailed me last year, but I'm going to try.

Anyway, for posterity's sake, I wanted to note some of my statistics for 2016.

* The first number is averaged across the entire year (366 days), but you get the second number if you subtract the first 8 days I didn't write.
** The first number doesn't include January, since I only tracked words that month, but if you average the time out for the rest of the year, it works out to about 2h 42m every day with no weekends off. So then if you take that average and apply it to the 23 days in January I did write, it changes the estimated total time to the second number.
† The first number doesn't include January, since I wasn't tracking time that month, but if you use the average above, it changes the estimated total to the second number.

So there's my writing year in a nutshell.

Here's to having just as awesome a year in 2017.

Happy New Year, everyone. :)

Writing Every Day - One Year and Counting

Sunday, January 8, 2017

Written by Kodi Wolf at 7:51 PM

I just wanted to take a moment to jot down that I've officially hit one full year of writing every day. It was technically 366 days, since last year was a leap year, but that's even better (I was born in a leap year and in February, so it's special to me). By the way, I'm counting from when I started on January 9, 2016 all the way through to today.

Anyway, here's to another year of writing.

Finally Hit 60,000+ Words In a Month

Thursday, February 2, 2017

Written by Kodi Wolf at 1:41 AM

January was an awesome writing month. I finally topped 60,000 words in a single month. I tried to do this back in September after hitting 57,791 words in August, but it didn't happen. I wasn't actually planning to do it this time either, but when I hit day 5 and realized I was at 10,000 words (meaning I was averaging 2,000 words a day), I decided I didn't want to waste the opportunity to go for it.

My total word count for January was 65,688, which averages out to 2,119 words per day. My lowest words per day was 446 and my highest was 5,508.

What's really cool is that most of those words were actual story text (about 51,000 or 78%) as opposed to brainstorming sessions, which is one of the ways I can increase my word count in a shorter amount of time. Don't get me wrong, though. Brainstorming sessions aren't padding. I'm working and being creative in those sessions. I'm just not spending time struggling to find the right word or the best way to describe something. That's why it's possible for me to hit 2,000 words in as little as an hour while the same number of words of story text can take me as much as 4 or 5 hours to complete.

All in all, I think this was a pretty cool way to start out the year. Not that I'm going to be doing this again anytime soon. I really had to buckle down to hit my word count, which took time away from Corene and neither of us liked that. I much prefer being able to knock off after a few hundred words over the weekend or in the evenings in order to spend time with my wife and catch up later while she's at work or asleep, but with my daily goal being 2,000 words, that just wasn't an option.

I think I'll be a lot happier staying around the 15,000-30,000 mark. That's still about a novel's worth of words every three months, which is pretty good in my opinion. For February, that works out to about 536 to 1,071 words per day.

Guess I should get to work on that. :)

February Was Good, March Is Harder

Friday, March 10, 2017

Written by Kodi Wolf at 7:34 AM

February was a solid writing month. My only real goal was to hit at least 500 words each day without missing a day and I did it. (This is different from averaging 500 words a day, which would mean I could go below that number on one day as long as I made up for it on other days).

My total word count for February was 28,730, which averages out to 1,026 words per day. My lowest words per day was 522 and my highest was 5,762.

After the intensity of January and the more laid-back approach to February, March has been an interesting mix of the two so far. I've decided not to worry about word count, since my plan is to focus on revisions in the hopes of finally posting all the new stuff I have for A Bondage Primer. So the pressure's off there. However, my energy level has been really low, so it's been tough to focus and get something done each day.

It's coming along, though, so hopefully I'll be able to reach my goal of having at least the currently posted 10 days finalized by the end of the month. Of course, my real goal is to have all 24 days ready to post, but that's probably stretching it a bit. We're talking over 190,000 words of text for all that (the first 10 days only comprise about 30,000 words, while Day 22 all by itself is that long; a lot happens that day :) ).

Anyway, here's hoping for a little more energy so I'm not having to struggle quite so much with getting it all done.

Still Revising ABP

Sunday, April 2, 2017

Written by Kodi Wolf at 11:38 AM

March was a revision month, hence the low word count. I haven't quite finished with all the revisions for A Bondage Primer the way I had hoped, but I'm close. Once those are done, I'll work on getting all that text formatted for the site so I can finally start posting new chapters.

My total word count for March was 17,710, which averages out to 571 words per day. My lowest words per day was 24 and my highest was 2,300.

I'm really pleased with how the revisions are coming along and the changes I've made. I think they flesh out a few things that were missing before (like how McKenzie ended up at Ryan's on Day 2). I just hope you guys like the changes, too.

Well, back to work. :)

ABP Is Massive

Tuesday, May 2, 2017

Written by Kodi Wolf at 10:02 AM

April was another revision month, so my word count was pretty low again, but I still managed to keep my daily average above 500, which is sort of my overall goal for the year.

My total word count for April was 15,711, which averages out to 524 words per day. My lowest words per day was 16 and my highest was 1,483.

So, about those revisions and why they're taking so long...

My working draft of A Bondage Primer is currently around 200,000 words. The average novel is anywhere from 65,000 to over 100,000 words, so depending on how you count, I'm revising what amounts to be about 2-3 novels all at once.

So, yeah, I'm still revising. And yeah, I might've been a bit optimistic in thinking I could get it done in less than a month. :)

I've also found I need to take regular breaks to write story text because doing nothing but revisions seems to be tiring for my brain (kind of the way working on nothing but outlining for Lights of Life was last year). I need to keep accessing the creative side of my brain, not just the analytical. On the bright side, re-reading the story has sparked quite a few new ideas for later scenes and things I want/need to follow up on, so that's been pretty cool, too.

That's actually why I have any kind of word count at all for April. It's mostly from writing down all those ideas and notes. Revising has become this circular process of revising, jotting down notes, revising, writing a scene, revising, etc. I've also taken a few breaks to work on other stories, sort of cleansing my palate before going back into the world of ABP again.

You know, I did some math. Even at 200,000 words, I'm still only halfway through Day 25 out of an estimated total of 180. If that ratio holds true, then the completed series will likely weigh in somewhere around 1.5 million words, meaning I'm only about 13% of the way through, though I do have another 100,000 words of scenes written for stuff that will occur later in the story, so I'm actually closer to 20%. That still means I have another 80% to go, though.

Guess I should get back to it, huh? :)

I'm Doing Better Than I Think

Saturday, June 3, 2017

Written by Kodi Wolf at 8:25 AM

May was spent continuing my revisions for A Bondage Primer and doing a lot of research and brainstorming for later scenes. But I can tell my brain is getting tired of the revision process because I keep messing with other stories, like Warrior Slave and POW. I might actually be shifting to POW for a little while, I'm not sure.

My total word count for May was 16,231, which averages out to 524 words per day. My lowest words per day was 93 and my highest was 3,205.

So I just checked my writing goals spreadsheet and did some math and it looks like even though my word count was lower than I wanted it to be, it was actually a good writing month. Out of those 16,000 words, over 11,000 went towards new scenes (about 3,000 for Day 25 and 8,000 for scenes that will happen much later in the story). For some reason though, I keep feeling like I'm not making any progress, so I need to keep reminding myself that 11,000 words of story text in a month is really good.

I think part of the problem is that I've been wanting to post the new stuff for ABP since way back in October and it's now June and I still haven't posted yet, which is frustrating. But I know I'll get there eventually. I just have to be patient. And I think the changes I've made to the story since then have really improved it, so it's good that I took the time to get feedback before posting. I just need to chill.

The other thing I need to do is figure out how to get back to updating my Progress Reports every day (or at least every few days). I've been working on my laptop in the living room because the recliner seems to be a lot better for my back than my office chair, which has allowed me to work at the computer for much longer periods of time. But now that I'm not on my desktop in the office every day, which is where I have the programs installed to update my site, the location change has thrown off my routine. And yes, I could install the programs on the laptop, but then I'd have to uninstall them from the desktop because I don't have enough licenses to do both and I don't want to do that.

Oh well. I'm sure I'll figure it out one way or another.

Taking A Break Helps

Thursday, July 6, 2017

Written by Kodi Wolf at 1:51 AM

I decided June would be a break month and I think it went pretty well. I actually increased my word count from the past 3 months without forcing it and most of it (84%) was story text. Even though I was trying to take a break from A Bondage Primer, I still worked on it (over 2,700 words). I also worked on POW (almost 1,900 words) and I got a lot written for Xena: Warrior Slave (almost 8,000 words). I even played around with a couple fanfic ideas for the first two episodes of Xena, Sins of the Past (over 3,000 words) and Chariots of War (just some outlining and notes).

My total word count for June was 18,551, which averages out to 618 words per day. My lowest words per day was 109 and my highest was 3,102.

I think July is going to be another break month. I'm feeling stressed and I need to let myself relax or I'm going to end up blocking myself. I think part of it is probably that it's summer and I really hate the heat (it just makes me even more tired than usual), but then there's medical stuff going on that's freaking me out, too (nothing serious, just my wife's cataract surgery, which went fine last time on the other eye, so it should be fine this time, too, I just freak out about that kind of stuff).

Anyway, I'll still be writing every day because that's important to me, but I'm not going to try to hit a certain word count or force myself to work on anything in particular. Just whatever my muse wants to play with. At the moment, that seems to be Warrior Slave and a new story I've come up with that gets Gabrielle and Xena together that first night at the end of Sins of the Past (S1:E1). I don't think I've ever read a story that gets them together that quickly and I wanted to play around with it.

The other idea I've been playing with is for Chariots of War (S1:E2), but it requires that I sort of ignore Sins of the Past, which requires extra special backstory for why it's different. I'm hoping I can figure it out, but that could be one of those plot bunnies that never sees the light of day.

For now, I'm just going to go play. :)

Sometimes Scraping By Is Good Enough

Monday, August 7, 2017

Written by Kodi Wolf at 11:38 PM

July was a rather challenging month and that's continued going in to August.

My desktop pretty much died the first week of July. Luckily, it's not what I've been using to write on, but it is what I use to update this site and keep track of bills and play games, so I had to get a new one. But my anxiety has been through the roof and setting it up is freaking me out (what if it doesn't work and I'm already past the return date, so I'll be out the money or have to pay to fix it, etc.), so it's still sitting unplugged in the living room.

I was diagnosed with carpal tunnel syndrome in my right wrist, so I've been doing ice, wearing a brace, and trying not to use it as much as possible.

I popped a filling right before Corene's cataract surgery on the 18th (which went perfect, by the way), but with all the follow-up appointments for that, I still haven't gotten in to see my dentist to get it fixed, so I've just been using that over-the-counter temporary filling stuff.

Then I broke my toe last Monday.

And I've been passing a kidney stone for the past few days.

Oh, and my cornea dystrophy (Salzmann's Nodular Degeneration) is getting worse, but frankly I'm terrified of the surgery for it, so I've just been bumping up the font on my screen.

And just to add insult to injury, I started my period today.

The one bright spot in all of this has been how well Corene's cataract surgery went. She's gone from 20/25 vision in her right eye with glasses to nearly 20/20 vision without glasses, which is just awesome. She'll still need to get new glasses at some point, but for now she's just been wearing readers to see small stuff.

Despite all of that, I've managed to continue to write every day, even on days when I didn't think I had it in me, but it's definitely felt like an uphill battle.

My total word count for July was 18,826, which averages out to 607 words per day. My lowest words per day was 100 and my highest was 3,393.

My goal for this month is to keep doing what I've been doing and try to maintain a daily average of 500 words. At first, I was a little behind (only averaging about 450 words per day), but I caught up today (I'm now at 506).

But yeah, for the time being, scraping by with the bare minimum feels like a major accomplishment. I mean I haven't given up and rather than let this stuff be an excuse to fail, I've modified my expectations, which isn't easy for a perfectionist. And I'm doing my best to work within those limitations that are outside my control and still achieve my goals, which is to write every day.

All things considered, I'm actually doing okay.

Now that I think about it, I did more than 100 words a day extra above and beyond my basic goal of 500 words a day, which over the course of the month was an extra 3,326 words. That's actually pretty good.

Okay, with that little pep talk, I'm going to see if I can take my mind off all this stressful stuff and go play in one of my worlds.

I Saw The Total Solar Eclipse

Tuesday, September 5, 2017

Written by Kodi Wolf at 12:04 PM

Despite all the medical drama of the past couple months (including a little trip to the ER for that kidney stone I was passing), August was my best month of writing since February.

My total word count for August was 26,199, which averages out to 845 words per day. My lowest words per day was 185 and my highest was 3,563.

I have to say the highlight of my month, though, was getting to see the total solar eclipse, which was just incredible.

I went into it not really expecting that much, but also not wanting to pass up the opportunity to see it. Those kinds of experiences tend to come around once in a lifetime and as a writer, I like to collect that kind of stuff for later story fodder. The other cool thing is that the eclipse was on August 21st, the 13th anniversary of my handfasting to my wife Corene. That was just one more reason why we couldn't miss it.

Corene and I only had to drive about 3 hours to get in the path of totality and it was so worth it. That has to be one of the most spectacular things I've ever seen. I actually got choked up. But there was also this peaceful moment, where I had my arm around my wife's waist as we leaned back against the side of the car and just looked up at the eclipse together. I even achieved my secret goal of a quick kiss during the eclipse. :)

I still haven't seen any footage that accurately shows what it really looked like. When they show a wide shot, they get the blue of the sky, but the eclipse ends up looking like a tiny white blur. And when they zoom in to show the eclipse, the sky goes black because the camera can't take the brightness of the white, so you just have this glowing white ring surrounded by blackness. If you can imagine putting those two things together, you'll come close to what it actually looked like.

Imagine the sky at around 5am. The sun hasn't come up yet, but you can see the yellow glow on the horizon. Then high in the sky, in the center of that dark pale blue, there's a perfect black circle the size of the sun surrounded by a wispy halo of pure bright white light. That's the best description I can come up with and it really doesn't do it justice.

There was also the surrealness of it looking like 5am, and yet knowing the sun was high in the sky.

The next one going over the United States is on April 8, 2024 and we're already planning to see it since one of my sisters lives directly in the path of totality. We've already booked our room at her house. :)

Anyway, if you ever get a chance to see a total solar eclipse, do it. You won't be disappointed.

I'm Mostly Just Writing

Saturday, October 7, 2017

Written by Kodi Wolf at 6:33 PM

September was a really quiet month. Nothing much happened, except that I got my writing done every day.

My total word count for September was 21,324, which averages out to 711 words per day. My lowest words per day was 144 and my highest was 5,337.

I've been feeling pretty good where my writing is concerned. I'm making a lot of progress on A Bondage Primer and I'm learning that even the smallest brainstorming sessions can lead to multiple scene ideas that help me fill in blank spots where I didn't have a clue what to do.

Like today. I really only had a couple of notes to jot down, but then I just kept going and ended up writing over 1,500 words, which was awesome. And I figured out some cool stuff for multiple parts of the story.

That's the fun part about outlining. When I come up with an idea for a scene that I know needs to happen at a certain point, that scene usually leads me to create other scenes that need to precede it. So I end up with several scenes and a more fleshed out outline to work from, and it's all from that one idea.

I also figured out the perfect spot to use a scene snippet I'd already written and I love it when that happens. It feels like a double win because I've already done the work and can just drop the scene in (with minor edits), and it also makes that work not wasted, which is what it can feel like sometimes when I have a 'homeless' scene like that.

For the past week, I've been working on going through my previous brainstorming sessions and putting my notes into the places they belong in the outline. Doing that doesn't give me much in the way of new words to count, but it has led to some good brainstorming sessions, so I think it's time well spent (not to mention, I'm finding stuff I had completely forgotten I'd come up with, so I have a little less work to do for certain parts of the story than I thought).

I still have another 40 or so to go through and some of them are quite long, so I'm not sure how that's going to affect my word count this month. So far, it's been okay, but I'm going to try to not worry about it. The point is to make progress on the story, not just add more words.

So here's to making even more progress this month.

Making Plans

Wednesday, November 1, 2017

Written by Kodi Wolf at 11:57 PM

October was kind of odd. I got a ton of writing done, but it didn't really feel like it because it was a bit scattered. I've also been working hard on some admin stuff, namely redesigning the site to be mobile friendly, but also organizing my notes, trying to track down missing notes, making plans for what I want to get done this year, etc.

My total word count for October was 28,501, which averages out to 919 words per day. My lowest words per day was 138 and my highest was 2,248.

Regarding those plans...

I'm basically done with Chapter 5 of Prisoner of War and I'd really like to post it, but it's unbeta-ed and that always makes me nervous.

I also have a new Xena fanfic I've been working on since June. I'm calling it Sins of the Past Unchained. It's almost 23,000 words and is really close to being done. I just have this minor edit I want to make, but I'm having difficulty figuring out how to do it (it's really just a personal preference nitpick, but it's going to bug me if I don't fix it).

I also have Parts 6-9 of Xena: Warrior Slave pretty much done, but I haven't been sure about posting them because again I don't have any betareaders.

Plus, I've been wanting to redesign my fanfic site to be more mobile friendly (not just my main site), and I want to offer Kindle, ePub, and PDF versions of everything, and so I want those things done before I post anything new. That way when I send the update to my list, I can also say, "Hey, go check out the new design and download whatever you want, too."

So between that growing to-do list and not having anything betaread, I just keep putting it off and I don't like doing that. I want you to have new stuff to read.

Anyway, that's where the "making plans" thing comes in. I'm working on listing out exactly what I need to do to get myself to the point where I can post already. I've made quite a bit of headway on the list, which included figuring out how to use Scrivener to create HTML versions of my stories in less than 5 minutes. That alone is going to save me days of work for each of my stories every time I post. (Seriously, you have no idea what a timesaver that's going to be and it only took me about 15 minutes to figure it out once I realized Scrivener could create HTML files.)

So, my current goal is to get those other things done so I can post at least one of the above things before the end of the year. I've only got 60 days, so I guess I better get crackin', huh? :)

2 Stories In Beta

Wednesday, December 6, 2017

Written by Kodi Wolf at 8:49 PM

November was one of my more difficult months, but somehow I hit my goal of at least keeping up my average of 500 words per day, though there were only 7 days in which I actually wrote more than 500 words. It was those 7 days, and mostly the last 2 days of the month, that made up for the other 23 being so low.

My total word count for November was 15,198, which averages out to 507 words per day. My lowest words per day was 30 and my highest was 2,330.

So, remember those plans I mentioned in my last post? Well, I've changed my mind about the redesign. Not that I'm not going to do it, but about needing to have that done before I post something new. With that off my short-term plate, things should move faster with posting new content.

In regards to that content, Prisoner of War and Sins of the Past Unchained each have 1 new betareader now, so at least that process is moving along.

Here's hoping I'll be able to post at least one of those before the end of the year.

New ABP Chapters Posted

Tuesday, December 26, 2017

Written by Kodi Wolf at 4:26 AM

I've posted Days 1-17 of A Bondage Primer. Days 1-10 have been revised and expanded from what was previously posted, while Days 11-17 are all new. I've also decided to increase the number of free chapters from 2 to 14. That means there's now over 77,000 words of free story for you to read (the rest is only available with a Site Membership).

I've also updated the warnings to include a lot of stuff I know will be coming up in the story at some point based on my outline, so you might want to check those out. There's also a new synopsis and extended notes regarding the warnings.

I was really trying to get this done in time for Christmas, but I didn't quite make it. Then again, I figure a day late is better than nothing. :) (By the way, the PDF has not been updated yet. I'll get to that later.)

Well, I hope you like the new chapters. It's a little nerve-wracking posting new content after so long (the last time I updated ABP was in 2001), but I've been working on this story pretty consistently for the past couple years and I really didn't want to let another year go by without posting.

I have more chapters in the process of being finalized, so there will definitely be more posts coming next year.

Happy holidays. :)