Setting Goals
Reaching the finish line faster
Good morning, Dreamers! It’s almost fall, which is one of the most exciting things you can say as a writer. Time to pull out our chunky sweaters and mugs of the scalding hot leaf water that we call tea.
Recently, I haven’t been writing as much, and I began to wonder how to fix that. After thinking for a while, I decided to set better writing goals for myself. Is it going to be grueling? Yes. Writing is hard, whether or not we want to admit it to ourselves. But by setting goals and sticking to them, we might just be able to make it easier for ourselves.
Setting Word Count Goals
One of the best things you can do to force yourself to write is set a word count goal for every day. You can start wherever you want, 200 words or 2,000. Just be sure that’s the minimum you’re writing EVERY day. As you grow accustomed to writing that amount daily, you can slowly up the daily word count at whatever pace you please.
Think about it this way: Say you want your novel to be 60,000 words by the time you finish. If you write 1,000 words every day, you’ll be done with that book in about 60 days. That’s just two months. 1,000 words seems like a lot, but guess what? It’s only about four pages in Times New Roman font, size 12. Four pages! That’s it! Come on, with a scalding hot mug of your favorite leaf water, that’ll be a breeze.
Specific Time
Something I’ve always found clever was finding a specific time in the day that you write. I write better in the evening or in the late morning, so I try to make myself sit down at those times to write. This makes your brain switch to a creative writing mindset at that time of day. If you are consistent with yourself and sit down to write at the exact same time every day, you’ll be forming new habits in your writing.
Is this going to magically make your brain spew creative thoughts at exactly 8:15 every night? Not exactly, no. You’re going to have bad days, and that’s okay. Just write and the editing will come in later to fix and fluff everything.
Habits
Good habits can break the bad ones. As someone who struggles with procrastination, I have a hard time beginning any type of work, even that which I enjoy. However, if you’re determined enough, you can break out of the molds that you put yourself in and find yourself becoming much more productive.
They say it only takes 21 days to form a new habit. Start writing every day for 21 days, and from there on out it might just become natural to you.
In the end,
setting goals is a fantastic way to create healthy habits of any kind, and it can work with just about anything you want to get better at. You can write those 500, or 1,000, or 2,000 words every day. I know you can. Make yourself do it. Even having a badly written page is better than a blank page. So, when in doubt, just write.
There may be days where you don’t have time to write, or you just end up staring a blank page for thirty minutes with no luck, and that’s okay. Do what you can and don’t give up.
Most importantly, make sure you brew some hot leaf water before you sit down to write. It’ll get you going. Although, sugar and cream are recommended, in my own opinion.
That’s all I have for you today! Keep your swords sharp, and your pens sharper!