Why do they write like they are running out of time?
So we have all seen this before but from my quick searches, I couldn't find anything that wasn't years old or solely focused on Pirate, most being how they compare to other writers. Wanting to practice my data skills, I made my own then and thought I would share since I think the last time anyone did was like 4 years ago but I could be wrong. I did it with the help of the Innwords website and their word count and pairing their data with the published date on each chapter on the Wandering Inn website and searching google or just remembering I read it at one point in time so not everything might be spot on. Currently, I went up to 10.6, which isn't the newest chapter but I'm only missing like 4 right now. The data just wasn't available when I created this. I will probably update this at the actual 10 year anniversary with better graphics and the rest of the data but I promise nothing. Anyway, explanations incase the graphics are confusing.
First picture is 2 graphs in one. The first being the line, which shows the the monthly total words published over time in red vs the average if they released the same amount every single month in black. I also added some notes to things I thought was relevant to just how crazy this is. The bar chart is the number of chapters published in that month, color coordinated to the chapter's volume. The second picture is total words each year, month, week, and then day, color coordinated by volume. The third is mainly days spent on each volume. The top line chart is the physical dates and the bottom is how many days spent on each volume. Each is compared to how many total words the volume is. The donuts are how many days each volume took compared to the whole and each volumes word count compared to the whole. The last picture is how many days, weeks, months Pirate has released for the Wandering Inn vs not released something. I'm aware the days off are usually spent writing and editing and their only true "day off" is historically Sundays but for the purpose of these graphs, if they were not publishing that day, week, month, it was counted as a day off. Hope that helps!
Now for some interesting facts! Up until the start of volume 10 (2/4/2024), Pirate schedule was Sun off, Mon write, Tues edit, Wed release, Thurs write, Fri edit, Sat release, and repeat. They rarely took any breaks and when they did, they were usually writing in secret so they came back releasing massive chapters or multiple chapters. Volume 10 was the start of them finally pulling back and taking proper breaks, starting with only promising 1 chapter a week while taking a month off a year and then an additional week off a month so they could have more time to do other things. It's why volume 10 is taking so long to finish compared to the other volumes. After 8 years, Pirate was no longer willing to promise at least 2 chapters a week every week of the year.
Pirate's most activate months are March and December, March being their birthday month and December being the holidays. Their least active is January, more specifically the first 3 weeks of Jan where they have only published a total of 350,000 words compared to 612,000 the remaining 2 weeks. They have only published 659,832 words on Mon, Thurs, or Fri, publish everything else Tues, Wed, Sat, or Sun. Their biggest day is December 23, 2023 at 121,186 words (IYKYK) and their biggest three months are March 2020, 2025, 2023. Their most active week of the year has been week 12, which is around the middle of March. Another interesting fact is Pirate has not released a single word on 27 of the 365 days of the year in the 9.5 years.
My biggest takeaway from all this is Pirate is very, very consistent. They find a pace and they stick with it. Making this, I expected a line chart that moved up and down but was very surprised to see it being almost straight. The average book is 100k words so that means from 2019-2022, Pirate wrote 19 books, 20 books, 20 books, 21 books, which averages to 20 books for 4 straight years. After that, they slowed down and just sit at a comfortable 16 books a year by casually writing around 32,300 words a week as seen by the way they float on top of the average line. It makes me remember something another author, Jonathan Renshaw, wrote while editing his book. He said I added 30k words in this edit. What I really did was add 90k and delete 60k but all you will see and care about is I added 30k. All we see and care about is what they publish consistently. We don't get to count all the words Pirate writes, then deletes, then rewrites over and over again until they are satisfied. So thank you, Pirateaba! Thank you for sacrificing your personal life to give us the Wandering Inn and everything Innverse! Your dedication to telling the full story your way is truly unmatched and I hope and pray you live a very long life to see it to the end and get to watch as generation after generation fall in love with your creation! I can't wait to see how you finish this decade of writing and look forward to the next! Another 16 million words, maybe?