Writing Goals Update
Goals. We’ve got to have them, otherwise, what’s the point, right? My thoughts exactly. Which is why when I got back to writing after taking a few months off to pursue other creative passions, I bought a whiteboard calendar and set some writing goals.
But simply naming the goals doesn’t mean we’ll reach them. Setting goals is just the beginning. It’s the easy part. The hard part is actually doing the work to achieve them.
Today I have an update on how I’m progressing on my writing goals. To be completely honest, it’s not as well as I’d hoped.
By the Numbers
In Scrivener, I set my project target to 80,000 words, which is my end goal for this iteration of my manuscript. My current word count is 68,106. At first glance, that seems pretty good. Less than 14,000 words to go! My target end date is April 30, and I decided to write Monday through Friday. Scrivener, being the cool tool it is, calculated how many words I needed to write on each of my writing days in order to reach my goal. According to that, I only have to write 566 words per session. Totally doable!
But then comes the real truth: that’s 566 new words. And I’m not in drafting mode, I’m in editing mode. Which means that while I need to add 14,000 words to the total, I also still have to go through 30,667 existing rough words. Not to mention the fact that many of those words may be unusable and my net daily word count might be negative on some days, as you can see happened quite a bit this month.
And therein lies the struggle. I’m not even to the midpoint of my story yet and my writing goal seems impossible. I’d really need to write/edit over 44,000 words in the next 21 writing days.
Obviously, I set these writing goals for myself, and I’m the one who squandered some valuable writing time this past month, so I have no one to blame but me. As my calendar shows, I logged 10 “Zero” writing weekdays and four on weekends, which could have been used as catch-up days. I’m not proud of the “Zero” days. And because of that, I think it’s all the more important to acknowledge them as missed opportunities. Did whatever I chose to do those evenings add more value than writing time would have? Maybe, but I can’t remember what I did most of those nights, so it’s hard to say for sure.
Looking Ahead
March wasn’t the most positive month for my writing goals, but seeing the numbers every single time I sit at my desk gives me perspective on where I’m at and what I have to do to get where I want to go. Now that March is almost over, I can look ahead to April with a renewed sense of purpose and a more realistic expectation of myself and my writing goals.
Goals are important, yes, but it’s also important we remember to give ourselves grace when we fall short and to motivate ourselves to do better next time.
Here’s to another month of sloshing through the muddle that is my manuscript and to the knowledge that, while the task is a bit daunting, I do enjoy every minute of it.
