Of the many things that happened in 2020, getting back to writing has been a most welcome change.
Too many projects and too many interests resulted in little to no growth in writing and little to no writing in all. 2020, and to be honest, the pandemic, pressed me to reflect on things I wanted to do, and where I wanted to be in 40 years. I decided writing was that thing.
And because I’m a nerd for productivity, I’ve been tracking my writing for the past few years in my wonderful Notion Writing Log Template.
Let’s jump into some stats.
Writing Stats for 2020
Definitions
Before you read the stats, here is the terminology:
- All Words: Unfiltered. Everything I logged.
- Words Written: items tracked with writing label
- Words Revised: Editing and revisions are logged separately
- Outlined: Outlining is tracked separately and doesn’t count towards work
Stats
Here is a high-level view of the stats:
- All Words = 49,834
- All Time = 4680 (78hrs)
- Words Written = 48,894
- Time Written = 3865 (64hrs)
- Words Revised = +234
- Time Revised = 728 (12hrs)
- Words Outlined = 706
- Time Outlined = 87 (1h 45m)
- Nonfiction Words = 14,573
- Nonfiction Time = 1684 minutes (28hrs)
- Fiction Words = 33879
- Fiction Time = 2962 (49hrs)
Stats Breakdown
All Words: 49,834 words in 78hrs
All categories of tracked writing.
Of course, there are times I have written by hand that may not get tracked back to the log unless I immediately transcribe. Therefore, some writing is naturally “lost”.
Written Words: 48,894 words in 64hrs
Excludes revisions and outlines.
This number isn’t accurate as I am sure I’ve done some editing or revisions that weren’t tracked as I didn’t start tracking revisions separately until August 2020.
Words Revised: +234 words in 12hrs
Excludes written and outlines.
This is the BIGGEST flag because, revisions were added and tracked late. And I didn’t even start tracking the span of words until December meaning that I could start a revision session with 6,365 words and finish with 6660 words making a net positive of 295 words. While I spanned 1319 words during this revision period, how many did I delete?
This will be a sore spot for me until I can figure out how to track revisions. Maybe it doesn’t matter, but I am really curious. There was a time, in my tracking, that I deleted maybe 500–700 words but had written many new words back ending the session at the same word count I started!
Interesting.
Words Outlined: 706 words in 1hr 45m
Excludes revisions and written.
I’m not an outliner but after reading “Take Off Your Pants”, which I list in my Books of 2020, I did start to track outlining. I wasn’t always successful since it doesn’t count towards the final word count. But, I will do better this coming year.
Non-fiction: 14,573 words in 28hrs
Non-fiction would be blog posts like this one, personal essays, etc., I seem to have put in a bit of writing on this. I was actually shocked at the number of words written.
Fiction: 33,879 words in 49hrs
Big projects in this arena include Project Dollar which was heavily written in Camp NaNo July 2020. Followed by a forthcoming short story called Waited which originally clocked in at 6,700 words. Let’s not forget the four 2k word short story challenges I did.
Other Fun Facts
- First Entry of 2020 was Jan 28th
- Last Entry of 2020 was Dec 31st
- All of my writing took place at Home
- April had the least entries at ZERO
- July had the most entries at 23 (Camp NaNo)
- July 5th had the largest single day word count at 2736
Bring On 2021
While I may geek out on how many words I’ve written, or how much time I’ve spent writing, it is important to state two things about all the above:
- These are not conclusive as I am certain some handwritten blog posts, poems, outlines, or bits of stories were not always transcribed back to the writing log, and
- This isn’t a competition or goal post for me to do the same in 2021.
The most important thing is that I am writing, and I’ve been so elated to do as much of it as I could this past year. These stats are just to see what the output of my efforts were. And it is not to measure my success or worth as a writer.
If you want to track your writing, feel free to grab my Notion Writing Log Template. Happy writing.
