November Stat Check

During the month of November, I wrote on all 30 days!  I'm at 86 days and counting.
I wrote 25,327 words (9 and a half chapters) for my novel
I made 0 submissions (which is bad, since two of my stories have been sitting with me since the end of October)
I received 0 rejections
I MADE ONE SALE!!!!!!!!!
I have 6 stories currently in slush pile circulation (well, four if you don't count the ones I've failed to get back out)
I made 7 blog posts
I took no days off

Analysis
NaNoWriMo was a bust, but I learned a lot about myself.  See my post from a few days ago for more thoughts on that.  I did reach the halfway point though.  A few days ago I realized that was doable as long as I hit just over 1,000 words every day for the last few, and decided it was a noble enough goal to work towards it.  Here's a picture of my word count chart:

(There are a few days that don't register me as having written anything, but that's just due to site discrepancies or me not realizing I had to change my own time zone after daylight savings ended.)  As you can see, my biggest trouble was that I hit a major 13-day plateau in the middle of the month.  I probably wouldn't have made it anyway, but the plateau really set me back.  I looked through my word counts and discovered that during my plateau I wrote an average of 333 words per day.  On all the other days, I wrote an average of 1,234 wpd, and my monthly average came to 844 wpd.  If that plateau had been shorter, or hadn't happened at all, I would probably have been closer to 40,000 words.

But, alas, these things happen.  Life gets in the way.  In this case, I received an offer to get a ton of free photos from one of the online photofinishers, and I spend much time and energy figuring out a year's worth of photos that I wanted prints of.  BUT, that isn't all that slowed me down.  I discovered that I was more than willing to get distracted because I was working on a chapter that really wasn't flowing for me.  In retrospect, I suppose I could have skipped it and come back later, but I didn't think about why I was willing to be distracted until the plateau was nearly over.

My novel, in total, is at nearly 69,000 words now, and I believe I have 11-13 more chapters to go.  My new goal, and it is a bit more ambitious than I've accomplished in the last two months, is to finish it before 2011.  I've done about 9 chapters in each of the last two months and I'll be contending with Christmas BUT I'm getting to the climax now, so things are more exciting and happening faster.  If I don't hit another major plateau, I think I can do this.

I would definitely like a break.  I've been working on this one-and-only project since late July, and I'm not used to focusing on one piece of work for so long.  I miss short stories, to be perfectly honest, and there are at least 7 that I'd like to work on:  2 that only need a little polishing before I submit them, 3 that need serious rewriting and critiquing, and at least 2 new ones I want to write first drafts of.  Now that I'm in the habit of writing daily I can probably do those quicker than I used to, but that's still probably a few months worth of work.

Anyway... I'm getting ahead of myself.  I believe I just mentioned a goal for December and perhaps through February.  Back to analysis.

I put submissions on hold for NaNoWriMo, so I really need to get my two rejected stories back out.  They don't make sales when no one's considering them, after all.  I also wasn't very present on the web this month, neither in posting nor keeping up with other people's blogs, but I guess something had to give.  I wasn't terribly behind schedule.

The bedtime goal I set myself for November didn't happen either.  I'm looking forward to getting out of the first trimester soon though, and I hope to see a return in energy then.

The one thing I'm over the moon about from this month is the fact that A Glitch in the Continuum accepted Pandora's Time for inclusion in the anthology!  I'm very excited to have made a second sale, and I'm hoping that more will follow, and perhaps closer together this time.

My goals for December are to finish my novel, get all currently-ready stories back out to markets, make about 10 blog posts, and get to bed on time.  At least three of these ought to be attainable.