Thursday, February 28, 2013

So, How'm I?

Hello there ladies and gents!

I know my posts have been exceedingly erratic and I apologize.  I feel like I have interests just outside of the social media blitz - I never really got into Twitter, am neutral about Facebook, and I generally don't get very personal with my blog.  All of this combines to make me seem reclusive into today's know-what-everyone-else-is-doing-exactly-every-second type of mindset!

I'll keep my news brief, as I usually attempt to do.

1. Much to my chagrin, the hosting site for my beautiful word count meters went down.  This resulted in a sort of cobbled together attempt at permeating the code therein by me, which meant the numbers seemed to update, but the bar and the color did not.  Much to my delight, the site has been restored (much to my relief, I may add!)  This means I WON'T have to go find a new word meter, which I have been dragging my feet on doing.  I should note, I just checked again five seconds ago and saw that the site was back up, after being down for a number of days.  Phew, this update could have gone very differently!

2. I finally pulled my act together and got some good writing done in February... but only for six days.  I know, right?  *facepalm*  In those six days, however, I managed a whopping 14,423 words.  When you take into account one day was only 347 words... the other five then averaged to 2,815~ words a day.

3. I am currently 48,490 words behind my goal.  My best point was February 1st (26,377) and my worst point was February 28th (48,940).  At this point, I have to write an additional 155 words/day, every day, for the rest of the year to make my goal.  That means I need to write 1,530 words/day.  Still doable!

4. Sales are currently non-existent.

Now here are some fun graphs for you to see, which I look at everyday.

The graph showing how much different than the "base" number of words I have to write everyday, to meet my goal:

The graph showing which days/how much I wrote, with a miniature of the graph above, and a line indicating average words a day and how they've changed:

The "3-month" graph, showing how my writing in the current month affects my total, and what the nightmare would be if I took the next two months off.


I actually have a fourth graph, showing the entire year.  It changes when I write, with a terrifyingly steep curve the further I go without writing.  I'm not going to post it, because I am not joking when I tell you - to view it with any meaning, it is literally over 2000 excel cells tall.

All my writing in February went towards a new book that I am on fire with.

In other news, I am both excited and chagrined about the new Simcity release.  Excited, because hey, SIM FREAKIN' CITY, amirite?  Chagrined because of the move towards always-online DRM, no single player, cloud-based saves ONLY and the lowest-version pricetag a hefty 60 bucks.  I know "60 bucks" is pretty normal... there's a reason why my game collection is limited, or why I picked up amazingly fun games like Towns for only 10 bucks haha.

And my last piece of other news, my mom paid for/invited me to her Thai Chi class.  Our instructor modified it with weights and (did I just fly here because) boy my arms are tired.  It was a nice low impact hour, but it felt good to stretch and do some reps, and the soothing music... altogether a nice experience.  Oh, and it means I get to do something with my mom, and it was free for me ;)  I'm not sure how many weeks the class runs, but I admit I am looking forward to Class #2.  I'm using it as a springboard to try and improve my health.  My weight has gotten scary and I need to get control of it again.

So I hope you all are writing more steadily than I, and here's to kicking March's ass.  Cheers!

4 comments:

  1. A little late on the uptake. First, glad to hear things seem a little better than earlier.

    I set a moderate writing goal of 15K words per month, except for November, figuring that would get me through the next two books in the series. And January went well: just under 16K words. February, not so good, not quite 8800, so I've gotta do some catch-up along with edits to Freedom Does Matter, since I've missed the planned pub date...
    Anyway, glad to see the RSS feed light up with a new post from you! Keep it up, please.

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    1. Maybe I set myself up to fail with such a high amount of writing, but I honestly think I can do it! I need to get over myself and descend into a distraction-free zone! I'm glad to hear your writing goals are going well!

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  2. Looking good, Shiy!

    I've always loved Tai Chi. Not only does it look cool, it feels cool. And it's freaking deadly! How can you go wrong? :)

    I'm a little behind my goal too. I set 300,000 words for the year, and as of the end of last week (it's Tuesday in Okinawa, where I am right now) I'm at 32,500. But (and it's a big but) I set my weekly goal based on only writing 40 weeks in the year. So I'm totally confident I can still make it. 7,500 words/week is pretty doable. :)

    Keep on trucking. Looking forward to reading that new book of yours! :) Are you planning to get back to IH any time soon as well?

    Your Friend,
    Michael Kingswood

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    1. Yeah, it's fun! It gets me moving and spending time with my mom.

      I'm writing whatever sits in the forefront of my brain atm. IH has been swirling there for awhile, but... is it possible to have idea overload? Focusing on one thing has been hard (I know, boo hoo me :P) I want to try and get at least one more out this year :P

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