This year, instead of trying to write 50,000 words in the month of November, I’m going to set a new challenge for myself. I’m going to write 250,000 words for the year. It’s my National Novel Writing Year Challenge.

This challenge includes all writing, in all my book series, as well as blog posts. That comes out to less than 700 words per day, if I write every day, which I know I won’t. Each month I pledge to post my progress on this challenge, and I invite you to set your own writing challenge for the year.

I know that not everyone can write 250,000 words in a year, and for most people, I don’t recommend trying. You’ll hurt your brain. However, with the recent completion of Seeds of Chaos, (Book 3 in the Warriors & Watchmen Series) I realized I wrote about 200,000 words in 2015, if I only count those which are worthy of publishing. So this year I have to step up my game, track my progress, and see just how prolific of a writer I really am.

In most genres, this would mean about two and a half publishable books in a year. But I’m writing in the Christian Thriller genre, the Tween Fantasy genre, the Hard Sci-Fi genre, and planning to write non-fiction this year. Each genre has its own expected book lengths, and if I meet my challenge, I should be able to publish a bit more than three books in 2016, if you include those which are prepped for editing from 2015.

I look forward to hearing your own experiences in setting your goals for writing this year.