With a full-time job and family, it can be hard to make sure writing is given its time, especially if you’re not a “working” writer, i.e. getting paid, with deadlines. So, for me, setting goals can help keep you going and see your progress.
Yesterday, I decided I wanted to finish my new novel by the end of October. No particular reason why. The date just stuck out in my head, maybe because I’d love to try National Novel Writing Month in November and see if I can write 50,000 words in one month — which I think is going to be an impossibility for someone like me with a day-job and family, but who knows.
Anyway, to get to 50,000 words by the end of October, I have to write … 354 words a day. Ok, for some reason, I did a rough calculation of this yesterday and came up with about 1,600 words, starting with 45,000 words still needed (I already had 5,000) divided by four month of four weeks each. Just now I did the calculation properly with the exact number of days (127, including yesterday, as I started yesterday) and came up with 354. My in-my-head math must have been way off yesterday. Ah! The 1,600 was probably the number needed for a week! This is why I’m a writer and not a mathematician.
Anyhoo, so I need to write 354 words a day. That’s way more doable than 1,600. 🙂 Yesterday I wrote about 1,500 in about three hours and I was thinking there’s no way I was going to be able to do 1,600 on work days. But 354 is much more doable.
So, I’m going to write a blog post every day, and at the beginning, I’ll keep a running tally of where I am in the word count.
If you’d like to tally yours too, join me in the comments. It’ll help us all keep going and inspiring each other.
Today’s start: 6,191
End: 6,794
Total for the day: 603
Still needed: 43,206/345 a day
Write On!
Day By Day Writer 