Today is the 70^th anniversary of D-Day, the Allied invasion of Normandy and the beginning of the end of World War II.

I don’t talk politics often. I find that, like so many of my opinions, there aren’t many people that agree. I end up looking like an asshole, which doesn’t really bother me but it can be a hassle sometimes. Then, there are times when I feel the need to break that rule.

God bless the troops, those that serve, those that have served, and those that will serve. Thank you for your sacrifice that I may continue to be free.

With that out of the way, I made a decision to turn the progress report from last week into a weekly update feature on the blog. I have several things going on that I’m excited about and you are (involuntarily) my accountabilibuddies, so here is the first weekly update.

Regent of Aldun

My first novel, currently titled Regent of Aldun, stands almost exactly where it did last week.

I wake up every day around 5 and write for about an hour and a half before I have to go to the day job. A guy’s gotta pay the bills, after all. In that hour and a half, writing longhand, I can produce roughly 6 pages. With my handwriting I get about 400-450 words per pages, which means I can write around 2500 words each morning.

This week I added about 5,000 words to Regent of Aldun. I only held my normal morning writing session those two days. The rest of this week I stayed in bed.

So, Regent of Aldun, sits just about where it did during my last update.

Life Is About Balance

At first glance, it looks like I pretty much stuck to my M.O. this week: I went gung ho after a new project then abandoned it. Honestly, that’s pretty much par for the course for me.

But that’s not what happened this week.

This week I made a conscious decision to skip my morning writing session this week. See, next week I’m heading out of town for business. I’ll be gone the entire week and I won’t get to see the wife and baby.

I decided to give up my morning session to spend more time with them before I go.

Next week I’ll be alone in a hotel room in the morning and the evening. I won’t have anywhere to go during those hours and there won’t be anyone around to distract me. I’m counting on next week being uber productive.

I Didn’t Slack This Week

My morning writing session is devoted to Regent of Aldun. I find that I am incredibly creative during that session and despite writing longhand I can crank out page after page without hesitation. I didn’t do that this week, but I still wrote a TON of words.

First, I wrote somewhere around 10,000 words for this site. They’re not published articles yet, but there is A LOT of content sitting in the queue waiting to go up. It’s content that I’m really excited about.

But Wait, There’s More

I also added a second writing project to my plate this week. That’s right, a guy that has published absolutely zero works of fiction is now working on two simultaneously. I have an article planned for later that will discuss the details.

But for now know that it will be a serialized western-horror book. The word count in that for the first week of writing is right around 7,500. I’m INCREDIBLY excited about it.

Going Forward

I’m still working on the format for these updates. Hell, I JUST decided to make it weekly. Back off.

I do have a couple of things in mind for these updates that will make them a little more coherent going forward.

Primarily, I need to start keeping accurate track of my word count.

For Regent of Aldun I count the pages I wrote that day and multiply by an estimated 450 words per page. For work on the as-yet-unnamed serial I take a look at the word count in FocusWriter and guess at where I started. For this blog it’s a crapshoot, a complete wild ass guess.

I’ve been listening to The Self Publishing Podcast a lot lately. Between Johnny B. Truant, Sean Platt, and David Wright they publish something like 4 million words per year. It’s really awe inspiring.

So, I’m going to start keeping fanatical track of my word counts for any and all writing projects. It may take me a while to standardize how I report them, but at least the counts will be accurate.

Beside, tracking word count will temper my right brain by allowing me to geek out with Excel.

photo credit: The U.S. Army via photopin cc