A significant writing goal achieved
I am reasonably goal driven with my writing.
I like setting goals that stretch me and keep me accountable to myself. Over recent years though I’ve learned to be gentle with myself when I don’t reach a particular goal. No one else cares, so why should I beat myself up over just missing a goal by a small margin? The important thing to remember while reflecting on the issue is that I tried. I gave it a good shake.
One of my goals each day is to write at least a 1000 words. On the good days I can achieve over 3000 easily; other days I struggle to get a few hundred. Generally I know I can comfortably average over 700 per day every day for a whole year. That takes commitment, discipline and determination.
Yesterday I passed the 250,000 word mark for the year so far.
I’m very pleased with this achievement. It means that I’ve achieved the same amount now for four consecutive years – that’s over a million words in four years. Not bad. I think I’m starting to get the hang of this writing thing.
The words I have written this year cover a wide range of writing activities: a novel, numerous short stories, many poems, writing exercises, essays, emails, nearly 300 blog posts, hundreds of comments on my blogs and a journal.
Good writing.
That’s impressive. That not only takes discipline, but perseverance. It’s the equivalent of a literary marathon. Well done!
Thanks for visiting and for your kind words. One of the interesting things I find is that the more I write the more disciplined I have become – discipline builds momentum and momentum allows the words to flow freely. And the more the words come the more the ideas for more stories, novels and poems flood into my mind. Quite fascinating really.
I like the idea of a ‘literary marathon.’ After a particularly long, gruelling and busy day of writing, I sometimes feel like I’ve actually run a physical marathon or two!