There are writers for whom writing everyday is key. I used to have spreadsheets that would use my daily word count to calculate what percentage of the story was finished, or how far I was lagging behind my goals. I gave that up for a much simpler system: I have a Google Calendar where I mark the total words for any stories I worked on that day. It's easy to glance at the last week and see how diligent I've been in carving out some writing time. Or I can flip ahead and gauge how much time I've got left before an anthology deadline. It's just the right amount of visual cue I need, without getting obsessed.
If I'm feeling particularly sadistic, I flip back and see how quickly I wrote the last quarter of Summer-set. The best person to pace yourself against is yourself, since you know that rate is feasible if you've already done it once.
I'm contemplating NaNoWriMo this year, and instead of slaving away on 1,667 words a day, I think I'll try focusing on writing on each of those 30 days. Then I'll see how the final accounting goes.
I feel like a runner in training, working on both endurance and speed. When I trained for my half-marathon, I remember it being mostly a mental battle, one of convincing myself that I could do it, and of discipline.
I ended up crossing the finish line so much earlier than my predicted time that my friend who was picking me up after arrived after the fact, even when she came early.
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