Lol! I realised today that I just surpassed my January wordcount goal. Yay! And, just to prove it, here’s a screenshot of the Spreadsheet of Splendor!

Along the left side, you can see the totals and the percent accomplished for each month and for the year as a whole. The coloured column is my daily wordcounts. The colour legend is on the right. It’s a quick and easy way for me to spot trends in my writing. When I mentioned that my spreadsheet was blushing the other day, I wasn’t kidding. Look at all that red! I find this frustrating, because during the summer my daily range was more like 2500 to 3500 words per day. But I wasn’t working full time then and now I am. And then some. Gotta remember to keep my goals reasonable.

I like my spreadsheet, though. It’s a much better motivator than I would ever have imagined. I can be falling down dead tired, but if I’m close to making it to the next colour, it keeps me in my chair until I hit that point. I’d like to start having more blues and oranges on the weekends, but I’ll settle for yellows on a consistent basis.

One thing that this has reassured me about is that I will have time to finish Knight and have it edited, beta’d and re-edited before the deadline. Providing there aren’t any major incidents in the personal life.

Picked up LA Witt’s new book, Something New Under the Sun, last night, because I had pre-ordered it. It’s the sequel to Chip in His Shoulder, which is indirectly responsible for my own scifi, If/Then. I won’t talk much about the storyline, in case I spoil it for anyone, but I have to say she took a few turns I wasn’t quite expecting, and one I was, but which was logical and in character. Except for one extra word that somehow escaped obliteration during the editing process, the novel is as tightly edited and sleek as anything coming out of one of the big six publishers. The world building is excellent–you can almost feel the pollution down in the Gutter and are extremely glad you can’t smell it. With the main plot of this novel being the thriller, not the romance, it drags you along at breakneck speed. I did find that I didn’t feel the relationship between the two main characters as intensely as during the first one, but the focus this time around was more on the action and less on the characters and their relationship to each other. All in all, I would give it a 5 out of 5, for those who like scifi with a bit of romance thrown in.

Next post is the Tuesday Tickle, where you get to read a little bit of one of the stories. And Friday is my post in The Next Big Thing Blog Hop. So don’t forget to visit!

Kitty