Here are the writing stats for Sprig at the end of December 2019. To see my progress in other months click here.

This Month

• Words Written: 10,595
• Words Published: 12,210
• Chapters Written: 5
• Chapters Published: 5
• Last Published Chapter: 6.6 Leaf
• Last Completed Chapter: 8.1

Total

• Words Written: 115,456
• Words Published: 96482
• Chapters Written: 50
• Chapters Published: 41
• Backlogged Chapters: 9

Notes

December was another busy month. Obviously, the holidays take up a lot of time and brainspace and I was still figuring out how to get back into the flow of writing at the beginning of the month. For most of the month, I was working with one or two less chapters in my backlog, because I couldn't keep up.

So on the 20th, I decided that if I continued at that rate, I was going to run out of backlogged chapters altogether. I chose to switch back to my original release schedule of one chapter a week to give me a little breathing room and to allow me to focus on quality more than I had been able to. I'm glad I did it over the holidays, but I think I'm already prepared to go back to every five days.

In the past week, I was able to write enough to get my backlog back to what it was at the end of November (9 chapters), and today, I bumped it up again to 10 chapters. This is all thanks to a couple of books that I read at the end of the month.

If you are a writer looking to make a career out of your craft, I highly suggest you take a look at The Fiction Formula and How to Write Fast. HTWF was the big game-changer for me. I have averaged about 400-500 words a day since I started this project. After finishing HTWF a couple of days ago, I wrote 1943 words in a single day and it only took an hour and a half of my limited time. The next day I wrote 1957 words. I finished 757 of those words in a fourth of the time that it used to take me. If I can keep up this pace, and I think I can, I should be able to write a chapter a day. And if I'm writing a chapter day, I can definitely release a chapter every five days. I plan to use the extra writing time to write bonus chapters that are exclusive to [patrons] and email subscribers as well.

Happy New Year!

I'm not a big fan of new year's resolutions. Two years ago, my new year's resolution was to run on Monday. Not Mondays—just Monday. So I ran on Monday, and it was the first resolution I completed. This year, though I am not calling them resolutions, I am going to be a little more ambitious. My goal is to have five books published by 2021. That might be a bit of a stretch, but I think I can do it. I already have Sprig (Issue 1 - Germ) available and Issues 2 and 3 are in the works. I'm also considering writing a book about that time I hitchhiked across the United States with a friend. Another goal of mine is to at least double my word count of 115,000 words in 2019 So there are some exciting things to come!

Thanks again for following along in the journey. I'm always happy to hear what you guys think, so feel free to send me some love in the comments or to send an email. You can contact me at contact@houstonhare.com. Let me know what your new year's resolutions are, or what you're most excited to see in 2020. I hope you all enjoyed the holidays! Happy New Year!