Results of My July Writing Project

July is officially over, and so is my Writing Project for the month. Remember how my goal was to write at least 1,000 words/day, so that I could ultimately reach 31,000 words? Turns out, I wasn’t so good at that daily word count, but I did succeed in reaching my end goal.

Quick summary of what I accomplished in July:

(Warning: Yes, I do talk about math and numbers in the upcoming paragraphs. I apologize if you’re one of those people who receive headaches whenever calculations are brought up. The left side of my brain took over here.)

I wrote a total of eleven stories, which tends to be around my average whenever I do this sort of project for a month. Seven of those stories could be considered the opening pages of a larger piece of work, but the idea tampered off and I stopped writing for that particular plot. Three of my stories were more like snapshot scenes from a much larger story, but they at least could stand on their own. And finally, my longest story in the collection was complete at 16,750 words exactly (so, basically half of my overall word count of the month).

Also, I re-discovered my love for writing in the third person. Seven of my stories were written in this perspective, including my large story. I used to always write in third person, but in my early days of college, I started leaning toward first person. Now I’m really enjoying how I can hide certain things from the future reader while I’m writing in third person. (Of course, the fact that the last few novels I have read were written in third person might have subconsciously affected my own writing.)

Lastly, I was not a consistent writer this past month. During the first two days, I only reached a combined total of 1,278 words. So I had to make up for my lack of words on day 3. And that was basically me throughout the entire month. I was very erratic in my daily word count. See, here’s proof!

Yes, I did overachieve on the very last day. I could have stopped at around the 1,000 word mark, but I was determined to finish the story, so I kept going.

But despite all my (very) late night writing, not having a strategy on what kind of stories I was planning on writing, and having an irregular daily word count, I successfully reached my goal with 32,208 words. In fact, I actually beat my total word count from last July.

Good job, Amanda. I knew you could do it. (Now you just have to get back to a somewhat normal bedtime schedule. Good luck with that.)