I said at the end of my last Adventures in Writing column that I wanted to write at least 15,000 words in the month of April. I also said I’d give you an update come the beginning of May.

Well, it’s May 2nd…so time for the update. Let’s go to the numbers.

First, let’s take a look at all the daily charts. As I’ve mentioned before, I track the number of words written and on a scale of 0.0 - 5.0, my happiness with those words. I also clock-in and clock-out each night. The point behind tracking all of this stuff is to realistically figure out what nights I should or should not be writing…which basically means that I’m looking for a way not to feel incredibly guilty on those night that I don’t write.

Here’s the total number of words written per day. This goes back to September 13th, when I started this whole thing.

As you can see, I’ve done most of my writing on Sunday nights and the least amount of writing on Saturdays — in fact, if you were to look at my original spreadsheet, you’d see that, since September 13th, I’ve only written on four Saturdays. That’s it. Four. In eight months. So you see, thanks to this little writer’s log, I no longer feel guilty about not writing on Saturday nights, which is why I now do my Saturday-night-drinking with joy, and not depression.

Speaking of joy, here’s my average happiness level per day.

This feels about right. I’m slighty happy with all the work I’ve done since September. Not entirely happy. But slightly.

So, I added a new daily chart to my records. This one measures the average number of words I write per session on any given day. It doesn’t take into account the days I didn’t write. What it shows is, when I sit down on, say, a Wednesday night, what is the number of words I need to write in order to have an average Wednesday night?

The benefit of this chart is to help me set up my own expectations, and then to push myself until I exceed them. There’s a little thing in the application I’m using to write my thesis (which is Scrivener, by the way, and which is worth every one of the three-thousand nine-hundred ninety-five cents it costs), and this little thing allows you to set what’s called a “Session Target.” I’ve had mine set at 1,500 words per session, but that was a number I chose basically at random, and I’ve given it the respect that one should give a random number, which is to say, very little.

But thanks to the above chart, I can now set my Session Target based on my real-world writing history. Not that, say, 805 words will be my target on a Thursday night, but that it won’t be 1,500 words either.

Now let’s move to the monthly charts. As I said earlier, my goal for April was 15,000 words. So, did I do it?

You bet your bippie I did it! Boo-ya!

What’s great about that is I got those 17,577 words, despite not writing for fifteen days in April (can you say GMC Alumni Week?). Wanna know how? By writing for more hours.

(I didn’t start tracking hours until March,
hence, no data for the other months.)

But here’s what’s interesting. Sure, I did more total hours worth of writing in April, but not because I put a more significant amount of time into each session. Check this out:

What’s .3 hours? Like 20 minutes, right? So by writing, on average, for an extra 20 minutes per session, I got myself 7,500 more words.

But is that right? One way to find out is the average words per session. Take a look.

So, there’s a 400 word difference between my average session in March and my average session in April. Like I said above, I only wrote for fifteen days in April, so if we do the math: 400 x 15 = 6000. Sounds about right. Averagely speaking.

So there you go: That was my April.

Except of course, for all the reasons I didn’t write, which included:

• A night when I simply couldn’t be at my computer, for sanity reasons
• A night when I took break after sending out my second packet
• A night when I hung out, drinking beers with Angie, Lindsay, and Dawn (a very fun night, by the way)
• A night spent at Erin and Lindsay’s baby shower (different Lindsay than above)
• A night when I didn’t write, but hung out with Angie and Dawn, during the course of which I had a huge realization about my novel, and so while I didn’t “write,” I was writing.
• Seven nights of no writing while Alex & Tempest were here
• One night where I simply don’t remember what I did (not blackout style, but rather, a few days between updating the writer’s log style)
• A night when Dawn and I went to Brian’s art show and then hung out with Angie (a night when I really should have been writing, though I did have fun)
• A night spent in Boston attending my grandparents’ and parents’ anniversary dinner
• The next night, when we got back from Boston, and I was feeling way too passive to create
• And last night, when I sat on the couch and did a bunch of reading, all the while hoping to get inspired to write, but instead, simply got entertained by a hell of a book (thanks Dawn!)

The question now is: What about May? Well, I’m not off to a great start. As I just said, I didn’t write at all last night, and tonight, Dawn got us tickets to go see “The Sound of Music” at Poultney High School (kill me now). We’re also going to Chicago for a week near the end of the month, and if history is my guide, I don’t write when I’m in the Midwest. I blame the lack of mountains.

Of course, you also have to add on the fact that I sent out the last packet of my semester this week — which means no externally imposed deadlines until June.

What I’m saying is, there’s a pretty good chance for a pretty poor word count.

But here’s the thing. The first draft of my novel is due at the end of June, and if I’m gonna get it done, I simply can’t be slacking.

So what we need is some goals for May. Obviously, total word count has to go up to 20,000. Since I don’t have any annotations, long-critical papers, or teaching essays to write, all my words can be dedicated to the novel. Hot damn! If I can get another 20,000 words into the novel before the end of May…well, that would fucking rock.

I’d also like to kick up the total hours for the month. With the week off for Chicago, it could be a little difficult. And with it being Spring and all, which means more cook-outs, which quickly becomes beers in the yard, it’s going to be more difficult still. But simply put: it’s gotta get done. So, if I can clock in 55 hours of writing time this month, I will be an incredibly happy little writer.

Most importantly though, I need to increase my average words per session. The length of the average session isn’t going to get much longer. Maybe I can crank it up to three hours, but that’ll be a stretch, because the truth of the matter is that I usually don’t sit down to my writing until about 10:00 p.m.

Looking back at my clock-in times for the past month, the earliest I ever clocked in was 6:15 P.M. (for shits and giggles: my latest clock-out time was 4:02 A.M.). When you start as late as I do, the three hour mark is around one in the morning (I usually clock out between 1:15 AM and 1:45 AM). Pushing any further than that is only going to result in sloppy writing.

It might be interesting to see how my clock-in time relates to my happiness level. I’m not gonna figure out the spreadsheet formula for that, but a quick survey of April seems to reveal that the earlier I clock in, the happier I am. So maybe, just maybe, I should try to be at my desk a little earlier each evening. Who knows? Maybe before the next Adventures in Writing update, I’ll figure out how to track that information. That’s gonna necessitate some time on Apple’s user-forum though, so who knows? Who knows, I say!

Where was I…oh yeah, goals for May:

• 20,000 words
• 55 hours
• A 13% increase in the average words per session (13% is the difference between April’s reality and May’s ideal), which means the following Session Targets for each day:
  • Sundays: 1,548 words
  • Mondays: 1,953 words
  • Tuesdays: 916 words
  • Wednesdays: 1,115 words
  • Thursdays: 909 words
  • Fridays: 985 words
  • Saturdays: 1,527
• Come up with a way to corroborate happiness with clock-in time

If I can do those hours and that number of words per session, then there’s no way in hell I can fail to hit 20,000 words.

Famous last words.