I haven't been writing long enough to have a good feel for my word count goals. I randomly chose 100,000 as my end goal because it is a safe goal. In the middle of the fantasy range, and gives me some room to cut or go over. I've passed 53,000 and I'm almost at the middle chapter, I don't know if I will end up on target or not. Maybe my climactic chapters with end up short, ripping through the action. Overall I am still moving forward and making progress. I am still on target with my outline, moving little things forward or backward just a little. The outline has been a writing savior, not only due to the short stretches I have to write with, but when I inevitably can't write on the weekend, I still know where I am. Or as what happened near the beginning of the month.
Reading is a great way to do some research about what is currently being published and what both readers and editors are looking for. Every writer has been told to read, read, read. Every writer is a reader, but the caveat for me is that if I am currently writing, I can't be reading. If I am reading, I don't have time to write. For some reason I am unable to balance the two. One of my favorite, daily updating webcomics finally ended a huge twenty year arc. So I went back and reread the entire back catalog. And lost about ten writing days. I was so caught up in the story that I was completely incapable of making time to write. I have decided to restrict my reading to the time between my projects.
Having taken an unfortunately unplanned break really has thrown my schedule off a little. I'm not sure I'll be able to make my self-imposed end goal especially since I have neglected to remember I needed to edit a short story to enter into the Writers of the Future contest. I had to carve out more time, thankfully over the weekend when I don't normally right so I could remedy that. It had to take priority given it is due at the end of September, the same day this blog post goes up. I will make that deadline, but might push my other deadline to the middle of November. Good thing I wasn't planning on participating in NaNo this year. I'd love to submit something new this month instead of something old, just because I want to see how I did last month before fixing and resubmitting the same story.