Some Personal Statistics for 2014 · 2:48am Jan 8th, 2015
Alright, so I've mentioned previously that I have a creativity Twitter account where I'm keeping track of my words.
And I've put all my twitter data into a spreadsheet. (Thanks for the idea, Horizon and CouchCrusader)
So what better way to see how I did in 2014 than staring at a bunch of data.
For the "1000 words a day" goal that I thought was lofty to the extreme, I managed to do pretty well for myself. There's a lot of troughs which were my plentiful zero days. But honestly, I'm surprised I've gotten this far. I wrote 92,000 words last year.
But the problem with my goal is this graph right here:
See that blue sliver? That's the amount of words I actually published to FiMfiction. The red portion was stuff I put into various contests last year, like write off and EQD's Outside Insight contest, those are stories that I've gotten lots of feedback on that I need to buckle down and edit. The "unpublished" portion is one big connected story that I think I've finished, I'm in the process of angsting over editing it.
I wonder on the merits of my goal, what's the point in getting to a certain wordcount if what I'm left with at the end I'm too ashamed to publish?
I need some sort of measurable system in place that will get me to edit my stories, the wordcount method is very good at keeping me motivated to write, but almost prevents me from wanting to edit. I have nothing meaningful to report at the end of the day. Editing's real power comes from the quality of the stories that result from making it better in the end. The process of increasing story quality isn't something that can be measured using data, can it? If it can, I'd love to know.
It doesn't help that I find editing like trying to solve a Rubik's cube that already has one side solved; anything I do is going to ruin the one side that's complete in the process of fixing the whole thing. :/
May I gain the courage and conviction this year to actually publish something. I hope you all are having a good start to your 2015.
You really like numbers.
And I can totally relate to the Rubik's cube dilemma.
That's a really good word count you've got there! I'd love to see some of it published though.
2708336
I find numbers to be the only way I can measure anything. It's my way of understanding the world around me.
2708383
Thanks!
Maybe... sometime soon. I should probably start asking for editors or something.