Questline Delayed: A Paradox of Results

I enjoy tracking my word output, like most authors. Typically, I’m aiming for a rough daily word count throughout the week (minimum of 250, but once I hit a stride with a story it usually bumps up to more like 700-1,000 words a day) and then I enjoy tallying up the monthly totals to see how things are going on the macro scale.

I was looking at my writing data recently and noticed an interesting paradox I thought I’d share here.

The Data

I got back into consistantly writing late last December, once I had edits and publishing wrapped on The Game. Throughout that final push with The Game, I had been writing off and on since August on roughly 19,000 words worth of outline for Founder’s Legacy, about 7,000 words worth of Founder’s Legacy manuscript, and 9,000 words or so into Questline.

The consistant writing in January through March gave results I was quite pleased with. On January 1 of 2025, I had scrambled Founder’s Legacy up to 15,000 words. But setlling into a steady rhythim for the next few months caused that number to more than double!

Excellent progress was made Throughout January and February. The tempo was brought to a bit of a shuddering halt at the very end of February as a family member had a pretty major medical emergency that required me to dial back my other interests and hobbies. As the graph shows, I puttered along for another nearly 6,000 words over March and early April.

That’s Nice, Now What About Questline?

With April, I turned my attention to Questline, realizing that it was likely the better book to work on at present and should get a shot at life before waiting further on Founder’s Legacy. I took as much of April and May as I could, around moving and getting campus ready for summer camp, to work out the outline for Questline (when I was planning it for Kindle Vella I had purposly not planned too much into it so I could get reader feedback before commiting to anything).

Then Summer hit and writing was obliterated into a million little pieces by the proverbial lawnmower of symbolic summer chaos.

By July 13 the chaos was starting to settle into a form of routine. I tentatively coaxed my chromebook out of its hiding place in my room and wrote a few apologetic blog posts. With that done, I eased into the slow process of ramping up my writing process again. It’s been a slow road as things have still been busy in our household: house projects clamour for attention, work demands its dues each day, and calanders have an unfortunate tendancy to fill up. But, in spite of all of that, the writing needle continues to move foreward.

I am pleased to note that Questline is now reaching a comfortable writing speed (I think it’s me getting more fluent in the world) and we have now added 30,000 words to this little guy since July.

So, if we include outlines, I’m almost in spitting distance of 100,000 words written in the last year.

I’m rather pleased with this—especially since March and June were practically total losses.

Bottom Line: Tell Me About This Delay

The paradox though is that even though I have written more words than I thought I could this year, I still won’t be able to meet my goal of publishing a book this year.

Questline has come a long way, for sure, but it still needs more before it’s finished. I am cautiously hoping that the extra down time around the holidays might allow me to get the manuscript squeezed out and sent off to beta readers by Fanuary. If I can meet that ideal goal then perhaps I can get Questline out to the public by the end of Spring.

Progress is going well on Questline. I’m enjoying being imerssed in a more traditional fantasy setting than The Game, but still utilizing that less serious narrator tone to keep things light and enjoyable in the moment while still building steadily towards some overarching themes in the book.

I’ve sprinkled in everything from moody metal-singing orcs to fantasy office environments. It’s an interesting ride to say the least.

Currently, in case you’re curious. I just finished writing a scene where Donivar actually makes a pretty clever escape from a member of the watchmen in the Wiltonburg market at night. It’s an impressive feat for Don to be that adept, and it’s letting me start to see how he has progressed in this story. I’m eager to see what scrapes he and Roland get into as I start into the next section of this book (one that I’ve been eager for since the start). I get to finally bring the Questline Academy into focus and take a closer look at what happens behind those secretive walls.

I’m a sucker for fantasy academies. So I was excited to realize that Questline would give me a chance to dip my toes in and try one out myself. Not sure as of yet just how deep we’re going to go into it, but should be fun!