Well, I've decided it's time to get serious about finishing a full length book. Because I still can't get the internet at home, using the material I've written and archived on this site is, at present, out of the question. So I've decided to assign myself a routine (I want to have the book on the campaign ready to shop to Publishers by late July-early August and have it ready to go immediately after the election). I can't measure my productivity in time spent at the computer each day, as 152 games of freecell simply don't count as work product, even when I win 80% of them.

And so, I've assigned myself a word count. 3,000 words a day will produce 50,000 in 17 days' time. If I'm faithful to this count, I can be well into a second manuscript by the time I'm shopping the first, and hopefully be well on the way to being published by the end of the year.

So far, I've been a good boy. But it's only been two days. This morning, my wife was preparing to leave for our three year old's T-Ball game. I checked my word count: 5400. Not close enough to consider myself "done" for the day, and I'm not going to chance leaving the computer until it's done. I know myself too well. So I tell her "Go ahead, I'll meet you down there. I need to finish this chapter (fortunately, T-Ball was cancelled because the field was wet from an all too rare occurrence of rain).

I'm not trying to blast out 6,000 or 10,000 words per day. I know I can do it, but I've decided that a more disciplined, consistent pace will produce a better product and make me less likely to "fall off the wagon" because I'm not burning myself out. My blog production has me confident I can easily produce 3,000 a day, though, so I'm keeping it at that number. Maybe later I'll increase it, but for now, it's a good round number to keep me occupied.