Are Daily and Weekly Writing Goals a Necessity?

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I wrote not too long ago about the usefulness of keeping track of your word count progress, so I
thought it appropriate to cover an equally important and related topic—that is, daily writing goals.

I’d read early on about the importance of keeping a daily writing goal, and I have to say it’s probably one of the most useful bits of writing advice that I’ve ever followed.

You see, before I kept daily writing goals, I suffered from pretty frequent writer’s guilt. I would write, but even after a particularly successful writing stint, I would wonder if I’d written enough. Truth be told, no amount ever felt like enough—I always finished thinking, I could write more. 

Needless to say, it made writing needlessly difficult, as I was never sure if I’d made enough progress. It wasn’t until I started to set a daily goal that I was truly able to appreciate my progress and feel accomplished after a successful writing sprint.

In addition to helping to eliminate writer’s guilt, maintaining a daily writing goal accomplished something else as well—it encouraged me to write every day and make consistent progress on my manuscript.

Now that I’ve pretty near perfected a daily writing goal that works for me, I actually keep two goals—daily and weekly writing goals. Allow me to explain.

Using Scrivener (although a calculator would work just as well), I know that in order for me to finish the first draft of my current WIP by the end of the month (or at least reach 70k), I currently need to write 1,723 words every day, or 12,061 words a week. Because I’m an overachiever, I aim for about 2,000 words a day, or 14,000 words per week, which gives me a little extra wiggle room in case the sekrit project turns out to be longer than I anticipated.

The benefit of maintaining a weekly writing goal is again to fight writer’s guilt. If I miss a day, or even two, I know that I have the rest of the week to make up the difference, which usually equates to a couple hundred extra words a day. Nothing to sweat over.

The main idea behind daily and weekly writing goals is to train you to write every day—or at least as consistently as you can realistically manage. In order to use these writing goals most efficiently, there are two rules to follow:

1. Set realistic goals. Look, I’m more than well aware that not everyone can expect to churn out 2,000 words a day, and that’s totally ok. Everyone has different circumstances, and if yours make it difficult to meet more than 1,000 or even 500 words a day, then don’t set your goal for any more than that. There are few things more discouraging than setting a goal impossible to meet, so instead start with a goal you know you can meet. Start small, and if you find you can easily meet the goal, then try bumping it up a little. Everyone has a different golden number—the key is just finding yours.


2. Don’t guilt yourself over not meeting goals. Life happens. Inevitably, you’re going to eventually miss a day, or several days. You may find that you can’t meet your weekly goal one week, or you may discover halfway through the month that you’re behind schedule.
   
   It’s ok. Don’t beat yourself up over what you haven’t accomplished—instead, look at the progress you’ve made. Even small progress is progress—even twenty words added to your WIP are twenty words you didn’t have yesterday.
   
   If you find that you’re consistently missing your goal, then don’t sweat it—it’s probably a sign that you might want to reevaluate your goal. Set the quota a little lower and keep pushing forward. You’ll make it as long as you keep writing.

Do you keep a daily or weekly writing goal? Why or why not? 

Twitter-sized bites: 

Why one writer lives by daily and weekly writing goals while first drafting. (Click to tweet) 

Do you keep a daily or weekly writing goal? Here's why you may want to consider it. (Click to tweet) 

Why I Keep Track of My Word Count Progress

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I am a methodical writer. Despite previous pantsing trysts, I’ve found that I write a lot faster (and more
confidently) when I know where I’m going, and I keep a daily and weekly writing goal that I work hard to try to meet.

That being said, it’s likely little surprise to hear that I often keep track of my word count progress.

I’ll admit that it’s a practice I fell out of after using it for a couple WIPs, but after participating in NaNoWriMo last year, I remembered why I’d starting keeping track in the first place—and it wasn’t just to make the analytical side of me happy.

You see, it’s easy to forget what you’ve accomplished when you’re deep in the trenches of a first draft. The elusive words of “The End” seem impossibly far away, and the day after day slog can quickly become exhausting.

Keeping track of your progress, then, serves two purposes:

1. It shows you just how much you’ve written. Seeing your progress on paper can be really encouraging when you’re halfway through your WIP and it feels like reaching the end will be impossible. It can serve as a great reminder of how a little each day can add up to something fantastic, and for me, at least, it’s proven to be a great motivator.


2. Progress is progress. Writing down your progress every day serves a second purpose too—it encourages you to make daily progress. Even if you only write a few hundred words that day, the numbers prove that even small progress is progress.

During NaNoWriMo you get this really awesome chart thingie that shows your progress on an axis like this, that I completely love. As of yet, I haven’t found something to replicate that (except for doing it by hand in Excel), but you can try a widget like the one below to keep track of your total progress.

From Language is a Virus: 

42145 / 75000 words. 56% done!

(NOTE: If anyone knows where to find a NaNoWriMo-like replication of the progress chart, you will make me a very happy writer).

In addition to little bar graphs like the one above, spreadsheets are a fantastic way to not only keep track of your total word progress, but of your daily and weekly progress as well, which I highly recommend. But all in all, the important thing is to just keep track.

Do you record your daily or weekly word count progress? Why or why not? 

Twitter-sized bites: 

Why one writer believes it's important to keep track of your daily word count progress. (Click to tweet)

Do you record your daily word count progress while writing? Here's why you should. (Click to tweet)

Query Tip: Keep Track of Your Submissions

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The submission process is often a time of high anxiety for the writer. Between the seemingly endless waiting period, the inevitable rejections and the half-excited half-terrified jumpiness that comes with the arrival of every new e-mail, the query wars are nothing to scoff at. 

But while certain anxieties are pretty near inevitable when dealing with the submission process, a little organization can go a long way to making the process of sending those dreaded query letters a little easier.

I keep track of all of my sent queries in an Excel spreadsheet meant to help me before and after the query is sent. While I’m researching, I keep track of all potential submissions in this spreadsheet, organized by agency. I include information like hints for personalization (to that specific agent), what exactly they’re looking for (ergo: why I’m querying them), submission policies, average response time, and e-mail.

Once I have everything filled in, I usually have more than enough information to tailor my query to that specific agent, which makes it much easier to tweak my query as necessary.

After the query is sent, I keep track of the date on the spreadsheet. While this type of information isn’t immediately useful, it does become helpful to keep a record of the date you sent your queries and the date you received a response (whether positive or negative), to help get a general idea as to actual response times (or at least your experience of said agent’s response time).

The final bit of usefulness from this spreadsheet is a little sobering, but useful nonetheless. The truth is, regardless of how incredible your query and your book is, chances are you aren’t going to get a 100% positive response rate. Keeping record of who has already seen your query can save you from accidentally re-querying an agent with the same novel (which is helpful because unless you’ve made enormous revisions, chances are an agent who rejected your query doesn’t want to see it again).

While I won’t say that this sort of organized record keeping is mandatory for querying writers, I will say that it’s helpful in the long run to keep some sort of systemized record of your submissions.

After all, it’s unlikely that you’ll regret keeping a record, but not so unlikely that you’ll be glad you did.

Do you keep a record of your submissions while querying? What methods do you use to keep organized? 

Write What You Know?

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Most writers hear pretty early on that you should write what you know. While many writers agree that writing what you know is key to genuine writing, others point to speculative and fantasy genres where much of the writing is clearly not based off of knowledge on the writer’s part and use that as proof that writing what you know isn’t sound advice.

The debate, I believe, depends largely on how you interpret those four words.

Taken literally, the “write what you know” adage could be seen as automatically disqualifying any novel with fantasy, supernatural or science-fiction elements. We obviously can’t write about magic, supernatural abilities and paranormal creatures from experience, and thus, can’t necessarily write what we know. 
But when applied to our characters experiences and surroundings, the “write what you know” adage couldn’t be more relevant.

You see, the key to making our readers experience what our characters are going through is to weave truths into the writing. When your protagonist is walking through a rainstorm in November, don’t just mention the rain—think back to the last time you were outside in a storm and describe how it felt. When your character is guilt-ridden over something he just did, don’t say he feels guilty—describe the heat flashes and nausea and fear that comes with every bout of guilt.

Writing what you know doesn’t mean that if you’re a single mother from Montana, you can only write about single mothers who live in Montana. Writing what you know doesn’t mean you have to move to Thailand to write a story set in the Far East.

The true meaning of write what you know is to draw from everyday life. It means you need to pay attention to the world and even the most simple of everyday occurrences, because you never know when you’ll need to relive a moment of your life in order to realistically write a similar experience for your book.

How do you interpret the "write what you know" adage? Do you utilize it in your writing?

Social Media: It's not About You

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Before I joined Twitter, I had a lot of ideas about what it would be like. I assumed it’d be mostly people tweeting randomness about their lives that no one really needed to know or cared to hear about. And although randomness does appear on Twitter (even I couldn’t resist telling the world about the success of my attempt at Butterbeer cupcakes), it’s a lot more than that.

I assumed a lot about what it would be like, but I never imagined what a huge role community would play into it.

I know so far I’ve really only mentioned Twitter, but this applies to just about any form of social media, be it Facebook, Tumblr, LinkedIn (I’m guessing), Blogging, et cetera et cetera.

I’m not any expert, nor will I pretend to be. I only really dove into social media this past April, so really, I’m still a newbie. But if there’s one thing I’ve learned so far, it’s that when it comes to social media, it’s not about you.

Whoa, there. Not about me? Isn’t social media about building my platform and getting my name out there? Well…yes and no.

I’d be naïve to say that the overall goal isn’t to build online influence. It is—even I get excited when my Klout score goes up, when I get a bunch of new followers on Twitter, when my blog has a successful day with a lot of page views. Yes, the goal is, for most people at least, to build a platform and get known.

BUT. If you really want to flourish online, if you really want to get a group of loyal followers, if you really want people to like you (and when your goal is building a platform, trust me, you do), you have to accept that this isn’t about you.

Your blog? It should give helpful/interesting/entertaining information to your readers. It’s not about you.

Your Twitter? It should be used not only to spread your own ideas, but those of others. Networking means reaching out to other people and supporting them in their journeys. It’s not about you.

Your Facebook? Yes, it has your personal information, your picture, your interests but that like button isn’t for promoting your own posts, now is it? It’s not about you.

Here’s a little secret: people will tolerate listening to you talk about yourself sporadically. Hey, sometimes they even ask and that’s great. But if all you do is promote your own work, if all you do is talk about yourself and spread links galore to your various sites, guess what? People will stop caring. Why should they support you if all you do is support yourself?

You know that old saying “There’s no I in team?” (and yes, I’m aware there IS a “me”, but that’s beside the point.) Well it applies here. Social media is a team effort. It’s a community.

And unless you start supporting your fellow members, you’ll find that people will let you keep doing what you’re doing. They just stick around to listen.

How has community affected your social media experience?

Welcome!

First and foremost, to my Twitter friends who helped promote the launching of this blog and made it happen by following: thank you.

To those of you who magically found my blog through means not Twitter (or begging)-related: So cool! *squeal* I mean, welcome.

And now to get to the reason you took the time to support my blog launch by being here: the blog. It’s here. It’s a little silly. But hopefully at least one of you out there will find it somewhat interesting, or even better, helpful. Inspiring would be great, but let’s not push our luck so soon.

I’ll start by saying I’m no expert. I’m not published (yet), I don’t have any awards and I don’t have an agent. I’m just someone who loves to write and has been doing so religiously since the age of thirteen. That being said, I like to think I’ve learned a few things along the way. A few. Don’t expect Santa’s magic bag of tricks here, I’m not that talented. Though I am on good terms with Santa.

I digress.

Writing is a finicky witch, and I don’t mean the wand and hat variety. Seriously. She’s that friend who always wants to hang out when life is overwhelming but is rarely there to see you when you want. She’s ADD too, and gets you really excited about her new toy Shiny Idea that’s absolutely amazing and then about three chapters in distracts you with a plate full of mouthwatering brownies called “New Story Idea.”  The metaphorical brownies may not gleam in the sunlight, but they sure as hell smell good and make it ridiculously hard to remember what was so awesome about Shiny, especially since you keep drooling on the keyboard.

Sometimes you just have to strap Writing down to a chair, shove some Ritalin down her throat and put the brownies away for another time.

Mmm, maybe this metaphor got a little out of hand. I’m not saying you should kidnap your best friends and slip drugs into their morning coffee (I mean honestly, what a waste of perfectly good coffee that would be. Just kidding.) What I AM saying is that writing isn’t the fun little hobby people often think it is. It’s hard work. It’s only fun about half the time and you spend the other half pulling your hair out of your head trying to fill a blank page. And it’s hard. Sticking to a story isn’t easy, especially when you have three or four other ideas trying to distract you the whole time.

In the end, though, it’s worth the stress because you can hang that shiny new manuscript up and smile. And those brownies are freaking delicious (and they better be, after all that hard work you put into them!)

But then you realize Writing escaped from the chair and you have to go chase her down again.