In March of this year, I self-published my debut novel, the Soul Child. Now, among several other writing projects, I am working on book two of the series I’m currently calling “The Ascendants Series”. The goal for this book is to be around 125,000 words because that was the approxamate length of the first one, and I’m currently at 40,000 words, leaving about 85,000 words to go. There’s a lot of work left to do, but I wanted to share with you all today on how I plan to do just that.

During the months of October, November, and December, I am making it the soul focus of my writing to complete this second book. Up until now, I have been working on two other fiction novels and a non-fiction piece about writing. But no longer! At least for the rest of the year.

Not only do I want to have the first draft written, but I want to have enough time left in the year to do a first pass for revisions. A single pass of revisions usually takes me two to three weeks for close reading and documenting notes, which means I actually need to have the rough draft done by December 17th at the latest.

When it comes to finishing a goal that has a specific word count, the first thing you need to do is to find a word count tracker that will update as you write. For awhile, I used Pacemaker for this, but since buying the program Atticus to write and format my books, I use the built in tracker in Atticus.

Basically, I tell the tracker that I want to write 125,000 words by December 17th, and taking account of what I have already written, gives me a number of words to write each day. This will change each day depending on how much I wrote the day before, which is what I really love about trackers like this. There are days I won’t write anything and days I’ll write thousands of words, and I don’t want to feel shamed for the no writing days because overall I’m making good progress.

With the tracker in place, what I need to focus on most is making the best use of my time. Like I said at the beginning, I have three other books in the works. While I’m interested and dedicated to these projects, I have to keep my hour or two of free time a day focused on the book I want to finish. This also means putting down the video games, turning off the TV, and staying off the endless scroll of social media, which is all way easier said than done.

So, here’s the plan: my toddler is usually in bed between 7-7:30, which means I have about two hours to spend in the evening on my writing before I need to go to bed. Will I be able to do this every night? No. Some nights I go to a writing workshop, other nights I run a Dungeons and Dragons campaign, and then still there are the needs and wants like making and eating dinner, spending time with my husband, helping to keep our house clean, and so on. On a perfect night, I will write from 7 to 9pm, but there is absolutely no guarantee when I’ll get that time.

Then, I have the weekends, or part of the weekends. For sure when my daughter is napping, and then other times when she’s running around playing independently or my husband is spending time with her. On Fridays, I only work half-days, which is when I write, record, and edit my videos, but I can get some time in for writing before picking up my daughter from daycare.

It’s not a lot of time, but I think it’s enough time, especially if I keep my distractions to a minimum and keep my goal in mind. My husband and friends are also really great about keeping me accountable for my goals, which helps. And also, you know putting this in front of who knows how many people on YouTube, helps to keep one motivated as well.

But of course, whenever you set a lofty goal like this, you always have to answer the big question: why do I want to accomplish this goal? So here are my main reasons for this goal: One, I love this story and want to keep moving through the series. Two, I want to publish another novel next year and need a finished novel to do that. Three, once this book is done then I will be able to focus more directly on the other projects I want to complete. Four, I have spent entirely too long on this story already and just want to see it completed.

So yeah, by the end of this year, I’ll have another book completed. From there, who knows how long it will actually take to get into the hands of readers, but I would love to publish some time in 2025. A year is a long time, and a lot can get accomplished in that time. 2024 has proven that to me, and there are still three months left to go!

If you are currently on a journey of completing a writing project yourself, please share in the comments and let us know what and when your goal is so we can help support you, too.