I like words, obviously (or maybe, depending upon your opinion of the quality of my writing, I don't since I do such awful things to them). But I also like numbers. Which is kind of funny, since mathematics was always my weakest subject in school and I spent most of geometry class making fun of this one kid who thought he was a wizard. In my day job though, numbers are my bread and butter, and I've grown to depend upon them, love them, even. And I often find myself asking, whether at work or in my personal life, "how can we quantify that?"

I'm one of those nerds who quantifies his writing.

Some people tell you not to worry about word count, just to write. But I like it. It gives me a concrete goal to reach for every day. And it's nice to look back on what I've done every few months.

I've been doing a short story a week challenge through This is Horror this year. There are no guidelines for the challenge, other than to write one story every week. The stories can be as long or short as they need to be. It's been an interesting challenge. I've already written more short stories this year than I did all of last year (but then again, I also wrote one novel and one novella last year so there's that). Without further ado, here's my 2017 Q1 Status report:

Stories Written: 18

Words Written: 75,907

Average Word Count/Day: 843 (I try for 1,000 a day, obviously off the mark)

Longest Story: 10,300

Shortest Story: 192

If I can maintain this pace, by the end of the year I'll have written about 300,000 words (100K more than last year) and 72 short stories (exceeding the challenge by twenty). Of course I have a couple novels I really need to write, so maybe I'll get even more done.

The great thing is I don't think there are many, if any, wasted stories in here. Pretty much all of them I think could see the light of day.

Now I just need to find some time to edit.