As far as tracking my progress is concerned, I’m not great at it.

I don’t always log my words. I go months at a time of writing fiction, blog posts, etc. without admitting to myself that I need to keep track of my output, because I’m kind of stubborn and a little bit lazy.

So this progress report is going to be a mixed bag.

WordKeeperAlpha is a tool introduced to me by fellow writer, Emily. (She’s awesome; you should check her out.)

While I’m not great at using it consistently, I do try to track a lot of my writing when I remember it’s a thing. It’s useful to see when I’m writing a lot vs. when I’m struggling to produce on a regular basis.

Here’s the graph that represents my work from January of this year:

As you can see, I’ve only been logging a lot of the projects (like blogging and guest posting) for the last few months. And February through April? I seem to have forgotten that logging was a thing.

But you can see that Eager Observer has been getting a lot of attention this year. It’s coming along nicely, and I’m hopeful to have it out by later this year.

Here’s another way to look at the data:

Full disclosure: This is not a perfect tool. It says I only have one day writing because I take weekends off to spend with my family. And my daily average isn’t great, especially since the kids are out of school for summer break. But this is a handy way to keep track, and it’s easy to use, which is important for people like me.

Since joining WKA in July 2016, I’ve written almost 180,000 words – and that’s just what I recorded!

This is one of the biggest reasons I have for using a word count tracking tool. When I start to feel despondent that I’m not producing enough, I can look at that number and realize that I’m not a fraud.

I really am writing, and I really am a writer.

How’s your year going? What kind of progress do you have at this arbitrary halfway point?

I’m ready to see what the second half of the year looks like. Who knows? I might surprise myself.