I was pretty sure I would only get to 25,000 — maybe 30,000 — words for the month. But as I write this, I am already safely past the 50,000 word benchmark. I had always planned on writing a wrap up for the last day, as sort of an easy way to get in the last however many words I needed to, but I never considered I wouldn’t need any words.
This was way easier than I thought. I wrote every night when the kids went to bed until 9pm, and then edited posts and published whatever was done. This really only worked because my wife was stuck in bed for the majority of the month healing from foot surgery — so there was little else for me to do.
The first night it took almost 2 hours to get 1,300 words, but by the end of it I could crank out 2,000 or more words in just a couple of hours.
It felt really good.
I had always assumed I went through lulls with writing, but I think I just get lazy and fall out of the habit. I am going to be sure to set aside time everyday for writing from here on out, but taking my time more with the posts.
As it turned out the hardest part was editing. I didn’t account for how much time editing would take, and because my goal was just not writing the words, but also publishing them, this became a big struggle. As I write this I have two posts waiting to be edited before the end of the day to hit my word goal.
I need a better way to edit, so that’s next up on my list to tackle.
Topics were pretty easy, but a large part of that is thanks to the iPad Pro having showed up at my house. Without a new device to write about — especially one as important as the iPad Pro — I think I would have been a little thin on topics.
My biggest concern, more than the word count, was quality. I wanted to be sure to keep quality up, but since I typically take a week or more on each post, I was worried I might not be able to do this. I am not the one to judge the quality, but there are only a few articles which I look back on and cringe a bit.
Overall I am pretty damn happy with what I produced this month.
It was a fun month, and while I am not likely to do it again, I hope to keep my writing up and to be writing a lot more.
Thanks for those of you who encouraged me, and who actually read the massive amount of words I published this month.
Final stats:
- 50,856 total words
- 41 articles posted (including this one)
Thanks!