[I]n the next day or two, I expect to finish the first draft of a novella that I’ve been struggling with for some time1 Usually, when I finish a piece of short fiction, I move right into the second draft. But the novella is not exactly short. I expect the first draft to come in at…
[L]ast week, 99u published an article of mine entitled “How I Kept a 373-Day Productivity Streak Unbroken.” At the time I wrote the article, the streak was, indeed, at 373 days. On the day the article was published, I think it was up to 393 days. And on Monday of this week, I hit 400…
[A]bout a month ago, I automated the process of capturing how much time I spend writing each day, and incorporated that data into my Google Doc Writing Scripts. Here is how this work: I use RescueTime on all of my computers, home and work. RescueTime tracks how much time I spend in various applications, including…
[W]hen I was asked to write an article for 99U, I decided to get a little meta, and write about how I’ve been able to hack my writing streak to ensure that I write every day, even with a fulltime job and family. That article is now online: “How I Kept a 373-Day Productivity Streak…
[S]ince February 2013, I’ve used Google Docs for my writing. I’ve always been a fan of Scrivener, and I still use Scrivener to prepare submission drafts. But for a year and a half now, I use Google Docs exclusively for first, second, and final drafts. I was asked on Twitter recently if I had a…
[I]s July already over? I ended July with almost exactly 27,000 words written, not as good as June, but altogether respectable. It also brings my total word count for the year-to-day to 190,000 words, not counting blogging. With more nonfiction freelance work, I modified my Google Doc Writing Tracker to split my daily word counts into…
[I] have done a major refactoring of my Google Doc Writing Tracker. Several new features have been added, but the biggest change is that the scripts are not data-driven, making them much easier to setup and configure. If you are using the scripts today, or have been wanting to try them out, you are welcome…
[O]ne of the most frequent requests I get regarding my Google Writing Tracker is to make my Daily Almanac available as part of those scripts. The wait is over. Today, I pushed out the Daily Almanac the Google Writing Tracker project on GitHub. For those who don’t know, my Google Writing Tracker is a set of…
[B]eginning today, I am doing some alpha testing of the first significant update to my Google Writing Tracker scripts in more than a year. I will be testing these out myself over a period of a week or two before pushing the changes to GitHub. The newest feature is that the writing scripts now track both…
[I]’ve written quite a bit about how much I write, and that I find ways to write every day. What I haven’t talked about much is when I do my writing. Remember, I have a full time day job, and two little kids, so my time is very limited. In order to write every day, I needed…
[T]his evening, I wrote nearly 1,900 words, and in doing so, achieved a major milestone. I have now written for 365Â consecutive days. That’s one full year. The last day on which I did no writing was July 21, 2013, the day I traveled home from the Launch Pad Astronomy workshop. Since that day, I have…
The backstory [I]n 2013, I wrote the first draft of my first novel. The story began as all of my stories do: a story with no clear idea of how long it would be. Between March and September it grew to a 95,000 word story, and so I had myself the first draft of a…