Setting Writing Goals You Can Actually Meet

Hello boys and girls and welcome to the first day of November! For a whole bunch of you I know this means first day of NaNoWriMo, or National Novel-Writing Month. Some people diving into the challenge of writing 50,000 words during the month of November are old hands at novel-writing and use the camaraderie to kickstart a writing project. Others are rank newbies, dipping their toes into this novel-writing thing for the first time.

Regardless of experience or motivation, people seem to love to join in with NaNoWriMo because it provides a clear writing goal: 50,000 words or 1,667 each day, as some like to break it down.

I'm going to provide my annual caution to that approach.

Before that, however, I'm going to answer the question I'm inevitably asked this time of year and say that, no, I'm not participating in NaNoWriMo. That's because I have a writing process already, with clear goals and milestones, and I don't like to muck with it. This year I've written between 26,236 and 62,977 words each month, for a grand total of 451,675 words so far this year. (Those low-count months are when I've been heavy into revisions as opposed to drafting.) I anticipate I'll surpass last year's count of 559,357 words for the year, because I plan to write at least another 100,000 words in the next two months. 

In fact, if all goes well, I'll write twice that as, now that I've left the day job and am writing full-time, I plan to try for 5,000 words/day, five days a week.

But I'm working up to it. When I had the day job still, I was writing 2,000-3,000 words each day, so this feels doable - but also a push. Sure I could force myself to do 5,000 words the first day, but experience has shown me that doing so can exhaust me and I pay for it with several very low-count days. However, if I treat writing as a muscle and train for it as I would for a marathon, I can gradually build my endurance and productivity.

So I suggest to all of you hitting NaNoWriMo today - don't go for 1,667 words today, unless you're already in the groove of writing that much. Instead, consider a schedule something like this:

1-Nov	100
2-Nov	200
3-Nov	400
4-Nov	600
5-Nov	800
6-Nov	1000
7-Nov	1200
8-Nov	1400
9-Nov	1600
10-Nov	1800
11-Nov	2000
12-Nov	2000
13-Nov	2000
14-Nov	2000
15-Nov	2000
16-Nov	2000
17-Nov	2000
18-Nov	2000
19-Nov	2000
20-Nov	2200
21-Nov	2200
22-Nov	2200
23-Nov	2200
24-Nov	2200
25-Nov	2200
26-Nov	2200
27-Nov	2200
28-Nov	2200
29-Nov	2200
30-Nov	2200

That will net you 51,300 words by month's end. Best of all, you might end up with a habit of writing 2,200 words each day that will be sustainable after NaNoWriMo is over.

Something to consider! Good luck to you all and happy words.