No, the arbitrary milestone has nothing to do with NaNo, although I will cover that in a bit. I am happy to announce that Red String PaperCuts has reached a new, totally arbitrary and not-at-all-indicative-of-future-success milestone!

Can you guess what it is? It’s probably not abundantly clear. Our Visitors total for 2015 (2,171 currently) has eclipsed our Views total from 2014 (2,168). I don’t know what this really means, except for the obvious: more individuals have visited our website in 2015 than all of our combined reads in 2014! To be even more obvious, our views this year have far surpassed 2014’s. Hoorraaaaayy stats! (I would like a celebratory Red Stripe, please.)

In case you’re wondering, 2015’s 469 Likes and 53 comments are also much better than 2014’s 296-20. We’re almost in the 500-60 club! To be fair, 2015 will be the first full year we can see these numbers, since we began in May 2014. However, blowing 2014’s stats out to a full 12 months, we would have had a projected:

• 3,252 Views
• 1,423.5 Visitors
• 444 Likes
• and 30 Comments

So either way, 2015 is blowing 2014 out of the water. Now, say it with me: Hoorraaaaayy stats! And to think I was a liberal arts major (twice). Here’s to bigger numbers in 2016. But I digress. Onto the real reason you’re probably here!

NaNoWriMo Update!

As of November 24, I have written 45,505 words. Last weekend, if you didn’t see my brief update, gave me the chance to catch up after a bit of a slump in Week 2, and I’ve been cruising ever since. In fact, since my last little hiccup on Day 18 (135 words), I have written 15,268 words, averaging 2,181 words per day.

I made it a point to get as far ahead as possible over the last several days, because I will be traveling Wednesday-Sunday for the best holiday of the year (not Black Friday), and will likely not have much chance to write. (Is it bad that I still want to update NaNoWriMo every day just so I can get the 30-day writing badge?) I’ll consider writing 1500 words in my journal over the holiday a rousing success.

But I’m also not counting on it. Including a couple hours of writing this afternoon (we’re leaving later tonight), I have three more days to finish: next Sunday afternoon/night when I get home, and Monday night.

The good news is that I have become used to writing 2,000 words in a sitting. I can churn out that chunk in 1.5-2 hours of solid writing, or 3-4 hours of semi-distracted writing while alternating my attention between my novel and Netflix/football.

This bodes well for my future writing habits. Sitting down a 2-3 times per week to write 1,500-2,000 a pop is not nearly as daunting of a task as it was at the beginning of November. It will feel like a vacation after doing it nearly every day, or at least feeling guilty about not doing it, for an entire month.

Now that I think about, I’ll make 1,500 words in my journal a goal during my short holiday, just to be safe. I’d love to actually exceed 50,000 words by the end of the month, but really, I just want to win.

How’s the final stretch looking for my fellow NaNo’ers?

Steve D