Writing a novel – a writer’s journal part 16: progress report
I had a fantastic day of writing today.
I actually completely finished a whole chapter. Chapter 12 of my novel for children is now finished and it leaves the reader dangling ready to turn the page to the next chapter. I have been trying hard to finish each chapter on an exciting high like this, enticing the reader to keep turning the pages.
Stopping at a high point of drama like this also helps me as a writer. I’ve planned what happens next already. The scene is not yet complete and so I have the perfect launching point for tomorrow’s writing session.
I have set myself the goal of 600 words per day over the last month. This goal will remain in place for the rest of September too. Over the last four day, however, I’ve managed to achieve just shy of 4000 words, 1990 of them today, my most productive writing day in a long time. I’ve not only passed the half way mark of 20,000 words, I leapt over the 22,000 word marks as well. The feeling is great.
An even greater feeling is that the story and the characters are really taking over. The momentum has been building now for several weeks. The plot is now an unstoppable vehicle heading for the climax.
Good writing.
Writing a novel – a writer’s journal part 15: Goal setting
As a writer I have learned that I need to be very goal oriented.
- Setting firm goals for my writing keeps me on track.
- Setting firm goals keeps me accountable to myself.
- Setting firm goals helps me to track my progress.
- Setting firm goals keeps me focused and minimizes distractions.
I’ve written about setting writing goals before (click here).
More recently I needed to revise some of the goals I set for this year. Due to my illness and hospitalization several months ago, I suddenly found myself well behind with the writing of my current novel. For new readers to this blog, this novel for children is my thesis paper for my Master of Arts in Creative Writing. I should have had the draft finished weeks ago and I should now be in the process of rewriting, editing and polishing the finished product. Not so. My supervising lecturers have been very sympathetic to my plight.
About a month ago I reassessed the situation. Could I, in reality, get it finished on time? The lecturers believed I could. I knew it was going to be a close call. So I took a cold hard look at myself, at what needed to be done and the available time left to complete the project.
I decided to set myself a goal of 600 words of my novel per day. This would get me finished on the first draft by the end of September, leaving October to complete the rewriting, editing and copy editing. I also needed to set aside November to write a 10,000 word exegesis essay about how I went about the writing, my research and other matters.
My goal of 600 words daily seemed achievable. Last year I achieved just over 700 words per day for the whole year. This year I was hovering around the 600 mark so it was a realistic goal to set.
To help me visualize the task and the progress (or lack thereof) I was making, I set up an MS Excel file. On this file I listed the dates, my progressive goal for each day and then graphed the actual words achieved. Every day I update this graph and it maps my progress. It is working like a charm. At a glance I can see if I’m ahead of schedule (I was) keeping up (I did), getting behind (currently yes) or slacking off completely (I haven’t).
I think I’ll do it. I might need to take a few extra days near the end, but there is enough flexibility built in to accommodate this eventuality.
So it’s head down, tail on the seat and fingers to the keyboard.
I just can’t afford to get sick again.
Good writing.
UPDATE:
I did it.
I finished my novel 10 days ahead of schedule. This will give me much needed breathing space and more time for rewriting, editing and proofreading.
Becoming a professional writer
“A professional writer is an amateur who didn’t quit.”
~ Richard Bach
If you are a writer struggling with the dream of becoming a professional writer, don’t quit.
Persistence is the key, and hard work. Set some firm goals for today, this week, this month, this year and for the next five years. Write down these goals – then go for them. Don’t even think about quitting.
Word by word, chapter by chapter, story by story, poem by poem you will become a professional writer.
You may not reap fame or fortune – very few do. Most professional writers who diligently pursue their dreams make a reasonable living from their labours.
And while you are becoming a professional writer you will have the satisfaction that you are doing what you love – writing.
Good writing.
Writing Goals for 2009
I believe in setting goals for my writing. This is an important part of a writer’s life – and for almost every other pursuit in life.
Short term, regular Goals
On a regular basis I set daily, weekly, monthly and annual goals for my writing. These include:
- setting goals for the number of words written
- setting goals for the number of hours of writing
- setting goals for inservice training such as attending conferences, workshops, reading and other forms of self education.
- setting target dates for the submission of manuscripts.
- setting minimum number of posts on my blogs
Long term goals
Late last year I took some time to map out some longer term goals for my writing career. I set some goals for each year for the next five years. This may seem a long view of things but it helped me to clarify where I am heading with my writing. These goals included such things as the number of publications I would like to accomplish as well as some projected – and hopefully realistic – income goals over the next five years. All these goals are flexible and wil be adapted to suit changing circumstances.
My specific goals for 2009
It is always good to set some specific goals for the immediate future. Some of my goals for this year include:
- Completing my Master of Arts in Creative Writing – this is well under way with one year to go. I should be finished by this time next year.
- Writing a 40,000 word novel – this will be my thesis paper for my degree. The novel must be of a publishable standard. That’s my big challenge this year.
- Submissions to publishers of manuscripts written during my course last year. This includes several picture books, a short novel for young children, dozens of poems and several short stories.
- Continued posting of articles on my three blogs (see the links in the sidebar).
- Averaging 1000 words per day for the whole year (up from 700 per day achieved last year).
- Averaging 5 hours per day on my writing, a target I achieved last year. This might not seem much until you try – to average 5 hours per day I actually had to do many days over 10 hours to achieve the average. There will always be days when no writing is achieved due to illness, holidays, family responsibilities and so on.
I can see that it will be a busy year – again.
Good writing.
Aiming for the Stars: to Boldly Go Where no Blogger has Gone Before.
Aiming for the stars.
Now there’s a lofty goal. Aim high. If your aim is too low, you might just surprise yourself and hit the target, so aim high. I set high goals with my writing and my blogging, as well as many other aspects of my life.
Are Your Goals Measurable?
An important reminder about setting goals: they must be measurable. If I say “My goal is to be a better writer” that is not really a goal. How can it be measured? It is a worthy ambition indeed but not really a goal. If instead I said, “My goal is to write a post on my blog every day for a year,” I’m setting a measurable goal. At the end of the year I can test that goal and say, “Whoops. Only 23 posts – bit short on that goal!”
Take a Long Term View
Setting goals for today, this week and this month are important in many aspects of life. For the serious writer and blogger they are crucial. Without clearly defined short term goals I tend to mess around with this and that and don’t really achieve much. Staying focussed is all important. It gets things done.
Too often though, I get too focussed on the immediate, and don’t keep a big picture view in mind. I read somewhere many years ago that most people, when setting goals, vastly overestimate what they can achieve in a month, or a year, but vastly underestimate what they can achieve over five years. Writing and blogging are long term projects. You can’t write a best selling novel in a week (well most of us can’t). You can’t have successful blog in just a month. Take a long term view. Be in it for the long haul.
Group Writing Project
Darren Rowse at ProBlogger has us at it again. This week’s project is on developing goals for a blog. Two weeks ago many contributed to his challenge to write about The Habits of Highly Effective Blogging. I’ve had some interesting and worthwhile feedback from my contribution here on my birding site and also on some follow-up articles on this blog. I’ve been thinking seriously about my long term goals with my blogs (I currently have three – see the others here and here).
Where am I heading with these blogs?
What do I hope to achieve?
What stars am I aiming for?
My Stars – or the blogging goals I’d like to achieve by the end of 2008.
- Posts: To have written 1000 posts in each of my three blogs by the end of 2008.
- Income: To have a certain level of income (not for publication) per month by the end of 2008.
- Plan: To draw up a plan of what I want to blog about over the next three years.
- Comments: To respond to all genuine comments from my readers.
- Links: To make at least one link every week, more if possible.
- Read: To read at least three blogs of other bloggers every day.
- Community: To develop a community of loyal readers of my blogs by engaging them in conversations through comments, links and emails.
- Accountability: To be accountable to myself (through regular posts, links comments etc) and to my readers (through traffic and comments).
- Content: To write posts that will be of interest to my readers leading to increased traffic to and comments on my sites.
- Enjoyment: To maintain a sense of enjoyment through all of my writing.
Wait a minute, I hear you saying. You’ve broken your own rule about goals being measurable. Some of these goals will be hard to measure, so they will need to be refined, reworked and modified as I go along. I need some thinking time to work through the issues.