Wow, it’s been a while.

So, 2017 happened. I’m not really a New Year’s Resolution type person, but I do like to take advantage of significant turning points in my life to take stock of where I am, where I’m going. What works, what doesn’t.

2016 was a good year for me, writing-wise. I put more focus into it than I had been putting in previously, and it has been the start of something great. But I wanted something concrete to make sure that I was keeping it up in 2017.

I’m notoriously bad for not keeping track of time. Small units of time I’m generally okay with, but bigger units of time? I can’t remember if something happened last week, last month, or last year. I’ve got today under control, I’ve got yesterday under control, and then there’s this big grey blob called THE PAST which everything else falls into.

So, I figure–2016 was pretty good. Yay me. But there were swaths of time where I didn’t write much, and I have no idea how long those swaths were and how frequently they happened. Also, it was really inspiring to see everyone on Twitter talk about their yearly roundup, their stats, the time they spent writing and the number of words they wrote, and I realized–I’m completely incapable of reporting on that stuff.

I don’t have the data.

So, I did some Googling, and I figured out how to get the data!! It’s this really fantastic word tracking spreadsheet from Svenja (http://svenjaliv.com). And, I figured–I’ll try it out for a month. I’ll see how it goes.

Y’all–I wrote 17,311 words IN JANUARY. In ONE MONTH. And I skipped EIGHT DAYS completely, and wrote less than 100 words on three days and more than 100/less than 400 words on eight other days.

I didn’t do well at tracking my time–but let’s be realistic, I’m also doing a lot of writing as I’m walking, in five minute chunks here and there, and occasionally while I’m lying in bed with my kid. So I’m not gonna stress out about tracking time, especially when I’m making the forward progress that I want to make.

I set my yearly goal at 200k words, and right now?

Right now, things are looking pretty damn good.

Did you set any writing goals for yourself this year? How do you stay accountable? Do you have other systems that you like to follow, or goals that you like to set?