Tuesday, January 17, 2012

Achieving the 5000 word week

This past week I achieved the first landmark that I set for myself in trying to tackle writing a 100,000 word novel. In the span of a week, I managed to get down 5000 words. For me this was the first of several hurdles over the coming weeks to be able to write and meet goals even as work and my daily life happens around me.
Image: Stuart Miles / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Over the next several months, I have set up daily, weekly and monthly goals to try to help keep myself on track. Each day, Monday through Thursday, I aim to write 750 words with a goal of 2000 words over Friday, Saturday and Sunday. Getting to 750 words usually takes me about 45 minutes to an hour to write, depending on how motivated and in the zone I am, it is sometimes shorter. What this comes out to is 5000 words each week, which sets me up for 20,000 word months and 100,000 words by May 28th. Since I already started writing a little bit in December, I had about a 5000 word head start which I'm using as a little buffer in case I get behind for any reason.

I know, I know, all you NaNoWriMo marathon people are scoffing at my minuscule 20k per month goal. With work and everything else that goes on in life though, hitting that goal will be an achievement for me and hopefully give me enough of a break that I can succeed at the ultimate goal. So, wish me luck, I'll keep you updated as I go along, you can follow my progress in the bar over in the right rail. As of this writing I'm at 12k words and am heading for 15k by this coming Sunday.

3 comments:

  1. Very good read. I wish I had the drive to do something like this. I've always loved reading and have always wanted to write but I don't know where to begin. Sounds like a petty excuse, but it's the truth. Being the nerd I am, I've always wanted to write fantasy type stuff. But I just can't ever seem to get the creative juices flowing so to speak. Maybe one day :)

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  2. Hey Sean, all in good time! I'm just getting the motivation and courage together to take a crack at it now (at 32... eek!). The story I'm working on now has been something I've been mulling over for at least 3 or 4 months and I'm still not 100% sure where it's going. But, brick by brick as they say!

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  3. Quantity is good,
    But quality is better;
    Nothing is the best.
    --Howard Zenn

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