Content Warning: Brief and vague mention of chronic illnesses and some of the side effects of them.
This is the main post where I'll update my writing goals progress throughout 2021. I'm participating in the Get Your Words Out Habit Challenge for the fourth time in a row this year. I pledged a goal of writing or working on writing at least 120 days during the year, which is the same goal I pledged the previous three years. I believe I succeeded and slightly surpassed my goal last year, and met my goal exactly the year before last. I believe I was between thirty and sixty days short the first year I tried it. l I've also set a personal annual word count goal of trying to write at least 18,000 countable words over the course of the year. This is drastically reduced from my word count goal for last year, which is drastically reduced from the years before it. While I have met my Get Your Words Out Goal for the last two years, I have not come anywhere near to achieving my word count goal for the year in any of those years. I'm going to try to track my progress for both my GYWO and word count goals here, as well as my progress in any other writing marathons I do throughout the year. This is the format I used for tracking in 2019 and 2020 and I liked it much better than what I was trying to do before for tracking my writing on this blog. This format is much easier for me to use and it makes it easier for me to find and compare the information I'm looking for. For the sake of my spoons, I generally update the habit and marathon goals monthly on this website, as opposed to daily. The word count goal I sometimes update daily here, especially during Camp/NaNoWriMos, but other times I do it monthly.. But even so, my progress may not always be reflected accurately in real-time both because I tend to track in multiple different places -- often with a piecemeal approach, and because I have several chronic illnesses that eat up my time, energy, concentration, and memory.
Days Written or Working on Writing in 2021:
January: 1
February: 8
March: 6
First Quarter: 15
April: 12
May: 11
June: 5
Second Quarter: 28
July: 15
August: 26 (participated in GYWO's August Marathon)
September: 15
Third Quarter: 56
October: 22 (met my GYWO goal on October 30th, 2021)
November: 16 (met my annual word count goal on November 22nd, 2021)
December: 15
Fourth Quarter: 53
Date I Met my Get Your Words Out Goal for the Year: October 30th, 2021
Date I Met my Word Count Goal for the Year: November 22nd, 2021
Date I Met my Get Your Words Out Goal for the Year: October 30th, 2021
Date I Met my Word Count Goal for the Year: November 22nd, 2021
Number of Days I Wrote or Worked on Writing in 2021 Total: 152 days
Number of Countable Words I Wrote in 2021 Total: 22,010 words
Other writing marathons that I'm planning on participating in in 2021:
April CampNaNoWriMo (goal 5,000 words): 831
July CampNaNoWriMo (goal 5,000 words): 0
3 Day Novel Labor Day Weekend (goal write a novel or novella over Labor Day Weekend): I did not participate this year.
November NaNoWriMo (goal 5,000 words): 11,391 (I met my NaNoWriMo goal on 11/8/21)
Writing marathons that I'm not planning on participating in in 2021, but that I don't want to forget about:
The Artist's Way: (12 Week independent study program as laid out in the book of the same title by Julia Cameron. When I next attempt this, I'm planning on doing it during January, February, and March because that's the only three month stretch during the year that I don't generally participate in another writing marathon -- aside from GYWO, which can contain the other marathons within it). When I last attempted it, I realized that I should probably read the book all the way through once during the December before I attempt it, so that's something to bear in mind for the future.
The Writer's Games: I haven't actually tried these yet, and I'm not planning on participating in them in 2021, either, but I'm hoping to someday and I don't want to forget about them. So I'm mentioning them here as a reminder to myself.