Kaago progress

It is my plan to work full-time in the calendar months September to December 2009 writing a book. This page tracks my progress, both for the interest of Web site visitors and because having a public visible progress indicator will help me stay motivated. If you want even closer to real-time reports on my status, you should follow my twitter updates.

"Actual" word count is as nearly as possible a count of the words of text in the manuscript. A numeral like "1,234" counts as a single word; hyphenated compounds like "anal-retentive" and "half-a-dozen" count as a number of words equal to the number of hyphens; formatting, section and chapter headings, and so on don't count. "Nominal" word count is actually number of pages in standard manuscript format, multiplied by 250. The publishing industry calls that the "word count" instead of using the actual word count, because it better measures the amount of space the text will consume when typeset.

The plan as of the start of the campaign was to write 1000 words per day, starting from 25000 on September 1, and finish in mid to late October with a total of about 75000. As can be seen on the chart, that hasn't entirely worked out. I've been maintaining more like 750 words per day long-term average; and I now (end of October) think 75000 is a little low for the finished total and it'll be complete at more like 85000 - probably by way of writing even more than that and then editing it down. The pace curves on the chart have been modified accordingly.

For reference, NaNoWriMo pace is 1667 words per day; I was able to do that for 30 days when writing The Fickle Finger of Fate, while also being a full-time student, but working at that rate hurt the quality of the results, and I'd rather set a generous schedule and work under less pressure.