Sunday, November 1, 2015

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.

4 comments:

  1. I really like the idea of building a muscle for writing. I'd like to up my daily wordcount and this seems like a good way.

    I'm not sure it would work for me at the beginning of starting a novel, however. I usually have a very clear idea of what's going to happen in the first few chapters of a writing process and draft faster. I slow down when I hit the fuzzier spots in my outline, or have to change my outline.

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    1. yeah - there's always going to be slow spots and bad days. they are what they are. I still shoot for the same daily wordcount, but I also add buffer before deadlines, just for that reason, and I don't beat myself up for the slow days. (much :D)

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  2. Oooh, I like this plan. It's an exercise routine of sorts where you break in slowly, find your pace and keep it until the end.

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    Replies
    1. exactly! it works really well for me, especially in getting back into heavy drafting after revising time, or after a break

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