So, the September Challenge...

Celebrate the little victories!

I thought I'd do an After Action Report of my experience on that challenge. I entered it, not because I wanted the prizes (there were some cool prizes, though), but as a challenge to myself, with someone to report to as an incentive.

And of course, to make it even more incentivizing, I decided to report here on the substack, both the number of words and the raw bits that I wrote. It was exhausting!

Sure, I've written short stories in just a few days, when I had a deadline. But, after I finished the story (8K-14k) I'd take a break for a few days or even weeks. For this challenge, even if I finished the story (and I was not holding myself to short story, flash, novella, novel, I was just writing fiction), I had to jump back in again the next day and start something new!

Now, this was all raw writing. The most I did was read it out loud to hubby after I finished each day, and some of them in the beginning I would run through PWA (ProWritingAid) to catch the worst offenders of punctuation and spelling that I might have missed. Later on, I didn't even do that, and just left it after reading to hubby.

No plotting. No ruminating on what comes next. Just sit and write into the dark...okay, except the next to the last one, which I had a couple of ideas - A guy, a girl, a space station and a colony. That was about it. I wasn't sure how well I could do with the fight scenes for that one, or for the first one with the cryptids...I'm not a big fight scene reader or writer. But, I was pretty happy with them, over all.

The steampunk one in the middle...I thought it was going to be short when I started, just like the first one. But, it kept going and going, and I didn't want to get bored and lose my momentum as I could see it was getting longer and longer, and still hadn't gone anywhere. So, I'm saving that to finish up another time and I started the next.

And I finished that one....and still had month and words left. So I had to start the last one. I do intend to finish the last one at some point, I mean, it's super cute and all. The first one (cryptid) I'll probably add to it and then publish as a longer short story or a novella, depending on how much gets added, or even a collection of short stories. But, there are possibilities there.

The Sci-fi one is in edits and will be submitted to an anthology, at which point the original will go behind a paywall so that there are no questions of whether it was published or not.

The last - will probably be finished, and maybe illustrated for middle school and give that a shot.

So, overall, I found that I can write about 600-1300 in a day with other things going on. I can write much less than that, if my health/mental health aren't up to snuff. And I can write more than that on a good day. But, say average 800 words per day, not counting Saturday/Sunday in that, so I get some rest/slack and I'm looking at 16,000 per month, which is two to three short stories or around 1/4 of a decent novel.

Now, you add in editing and that is going to about double the time it takes me. And then covers, formatting and such (I'm working on templates for everything, so that I can just shove it in the template, change a few dates and a few titles and words, and easy peasy.) Which will leave me plenty of time for art for clients, formatting for clients, training the dogs and general housework and living things. And hopefully, keep my health improving by not over doing it.

Oh, how long will that take? 1-2 hours a day, 5 days a week. (for the writing/editing)

I have taken off from 1 October to today, I wanted time to think about the challenge. To think about what I liked, and if it was something that I even wanted to continue (hint - yes!). I've even thought about the "Pulp Speed" wiring that I've read about here and there, but, while I'm not ready for that now, I am thinking it could be something to strive for, because I need goals and challenges.

So, now, in my life - I've completed a N'Inktober one year, and an average of 7k per week for 4 weeks writing one year. And I think with some organization (and a cooperative computer) that is something that I can do even more often. I've started working with Dragon Naturally Speaking, to see if it can help with the writing (my health took a real downturn with all the typing - bad shoulders, elbows, wrists, back - it is what it is). And if I can do more with DNS, then I can concentrate my arm/hand time to art, which I can't do with voice. And get more of both done.

So, I guess the biggest things I learned was that I could do the writing nearly daily, even if only a little bit. And that I could do the technique of Writing into the Dark without freaking myself out. And I saw that a few people will even read my scribbles. So that's a little bit more metrics to work with.

Thank you for coming along for the ride. I'll likely be putting all of the stories behind the paywall after October, just to keep Amazon happy in the future. But, for now it's there to read.

Oh, yeah, the final numbers:

I wrote over 7k each week of the challenge (sometimes by a hair).
I wrote a total of 30,877 words for the month.

See you soon!