Another snow day today, and with a socially approved reason to hide out at home in my PJ's all day, I've been doing a lot of "thinking work" on the book. I'm having one of those days where it's like you've struck a vein of ideas and can't stop them from gushing out. Even with The Son around, I figured out a lot of scenes for Bresher's POV chapters, which have always been the sections that give me the most trouble. And I made some notes for the Sexy Next Book (TM). And I sketched out a few of Somi's upcoming scenes. I wrote ~500 words on Eleven Names. I even thought of a great hook for EN's eventual query letter. If I believed in muses, I'd guess mine had an extra latte this morning.
But I've also been having some goal angst today. It's the second day of February and I'm still dithering over my word count goal for this month. My idealized 2011 schedule has me doing another 20,000 this month... BUT this month has three less days than last month... AND it includes a preschool-free week, during which I will not have the luxury of 4 mornings to write... AND I'm about to start tutoring gig #2, which will mean two evenings a week at a nearby boarding school-- two-hour sessions with a half-hour commute on either side. We could use the money right now, but it's also wiping out two evenings of writing time.
So with all that, I'm thinking 15,000 is more realistic. But then that seems like copping out. I dunno. I'll brood over it some more.
Setting a stretch goal that you are capable of meeting is not copping out. Think about the time you had last month and the time you'll have this month and pick a number that makes sense. Maybe 15k, maybe 17k. It's hard to decide when you're being too hard or too easy on yourself, but if you pick a goal that's possible but tough, you're fine.
ReplyDeleteGood advice. I have this tendency to be either way too hard on myself OR to slack off completely. This "slow and steady" stuff is a good lesson for me.
ReplyDeleteAdding on to the two comments above, I find that, personally, word counts are hard for me to follow. I just feel like it's easier for me to work with something that has meaning to what I'm writing. When I was writing the book that I'm editing through now, I plotted out all of the major events and then I made goals for every week of how far I wanted the story to progress in that week, how many objectives that I needed to get through to be happy with my progress. I find it's easier to get inspired that way, because you're working with your characters and not numbers. But, if word count works for you, there's nothing wrong with that either. :-)
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