One reason I keep and publish stats is to hold myself accountable … another is to develop a feel for how long it really takes for me to write things.

But I run into quandaries about what I should count. Counting words are easy – they’re there or they’re not. Even with editing, I can count new words. But what about other things? What about research to understand the physics of what’s happening in the story? What about writing an orbital dynamics program so I can see what something will actually look like? What about writing a program to start with a certain colony population and propagate it forward N generations? What about reading books to learn about the culture or science background I need for the story? It’s all work, and it’s all work I need to do to write this story … but it’s not writing, so it’s something I haven’t counted in the past.

Starting this month (July), I’m going to start also counting research hours.

But due to all the research activity above, the count for the last four months looks light. I need to get back to actually writing.

March “Apparently I did write down some research hours”

WORDS WRITTEN: 0

HOURS SPENT WRITING: 5.5

WORDS/HOUR: 0

April “But not consistently”

WORDS WRITTEN: 0

HOURS SPENT WRITING: 0

WORDS/HOUR: 0

May “And when my writer’s group met I got motivated to write some words”

WORDS WRITTEN: 1443

HOURS SPENT WRITING: 4.9

WORDS/HOUR: 294.5

June “But not, sigh, consistently”

WORDS WRITTEN: 0

HOURS SPENT WRITING: 0

WORDS/HOUR: 0

July will be better!