# The Schedule Worksheet
Four inputs, the arithmetic, and the weekly tracker. Built on the number the other books leave out.

Budget one to two hours of human editing per thousand words of AI assisted output. That band is a working figure, not a
measured constant, and it is the number every other timeline in this category leaves out.

## The Four Inputs

1. Target word count
From your genre and your shelf, not from ambition. Look at
ten books you want yours next to.

2. Genre
Sets your editing rate inside the band. Commercial nonfiction
low, literary fiction at the top and beyond.

3. Hours per week you actually have
Not hours you would like to have. Look at last month.

4. Talking or typing
Changes drafting by a factor of three or four. Changes editing
by nothing at all.

## The Arithmetic

Drafting hours

Editing hours (words ÷ 1000 × your rate)

Proofing, formatting, front and back matter

Total hours

÷ weekly hours = weeks

+ 20 percent, because you will lose a week to something

## Deadlines On Production, Never On Quality

"Chapter nine talked through by Friday" is a deadline: on Friday you either have the recording or you do not. "Chapter nine
good by Friday" is a wish with a date on it. Every date in your calendar should attach to an act you can verify you performed.

Recorded. Transcribed. Passed once. Sent to the reader. Read aloud in full. All of those are binary on the day.

Use one hard external date at the end, and only one. Deadlines on production keep you moving; one real external date keeps you from moving

## Trackfourthings,Weekly,Onasunday

WEEK | WORDSPRODUCED | HOURS EDITED | CHAPTERSATEACHPASS | SESSIONS DONE

Chapters at each pass is the one people skip and the one that tells the truth. Words alone will tell you that you are ninety percent finished when
you are forty percent finished. If you track only one thing, track hours edited.

## Whenyoufallbehind,Cutscope,Notpasses

There are only two things you can give up: make the book smaller, or edit it less. People almost always take the second
without noticing they took it, because it does not feel like a decision. It feels like being efficient. Take the first one instead.
A shorter book that has been through all its passes is a better product than a full length book that has been through two,
and the market cannot tell how long you meant it to be.
