The first quarter of 2018 is done! Let’s tally up some achievements.

• I wrote every single day since January 1.
  • Total words: 65,741 (most of it in the Hunting Midnight series)
  • Day with most words: Saturday, Jan 28 with 2,975
  • Day with least words: Saturday, Feb 17, with 10
  • Average words: 727, or 69 words per day above target, resulting in a current surplus of 5,905
• I drafted three more Hunting Midnight episodes
• I wrote four juicy articles for The Self Pub Hub
• Made a few bucks, mostly notably $150 from Wattpad to come in share ideas with them
• Blogged about once every two days (48% daily blog rate)
• Started two Instagram accounts that link back to the site, with almost 1,000 followers between them (1, 2)
• An estimated 100 hours put into “platform” work which includes things like the Self Pub Hub, site maintenance and Instagram

Trends

As observed before, my energy over time does seem to drop. March had the least words, followed by February then January. Same trend applies for the blog entries and even the frequency of Instagram maintenance. My energy didn’t disappear, but it shifted into some other projects and social commitments. It think this is perfectly natural (for myself) and as long as I stick to writing at least one word per day and tracking it, I’ll be able to build up stamina and habit to the point of at least maintaining (if not dramatically improving) my average daily word count.

Goals for next quarter

The big one: start getting rated Amazon reviews for Hunting Midnight Episode One. Ideally, I can get about 10 positive reviews, which open some doors for marketing tests. But even half that would improve optics measurably. I think at the time of this writing I can guarantee three folks who’d be more than happy to pen a review.

The core unchanging goal: Maintain the discipline of writing every day.

Secondary:

• Publish two more Hunting Midnight episodes (can probably do more)
• Publish Lauren Messervey’s Crestfallen
• Start a new story outside of HM (lots of ideas abound)
• Ramp up the Instagram game with collabs, at least for @writewritenow
• Once reviews are in place, test some light marketing spends to see if I can’t add a few more fans to the ‘base
• Add more content to the Self Pub Hub, syndicate parts of it once HM reviews start coming in

There are bunch of other related projects I’ve got on the go, but are in such early stages that they don’t warrant secondary goal status, in my opinion. Shall highlight them if they escape the hangar and taxi onto the runway.

Happy Springtime!