Writing Goals

My awesome friend and amazingly award winning fellow author Linda Joyce (Author of the Fleur de Lis Series), you can find her on twitter: https://twitter.com/LJWriter and Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/LindaJoyceAuthor shared her idea on how to keep on track with writing goals. Sounds easy doesn't it? Okay the writing them down is grand. Then the realization of I'm giving myself a set deadline here sank in. Once that set in, I had to wonder, what the hell was I doing before? It's been a month since I've started that goal sheet. During that month I had a week of insomnia, which resulted in no writing. I've learned that unless I want to delete everything, and I do mean everything, it's best to not write when I can't sleep. I also had another week (the week after as it happens) of lack of concentration. Staring blankly at my computer and every now and again punching out a sentence was getting me nowhere fast. So I mentioned this to Linda who helped me again with her Creative Block Busters (told you she's completely awesome didn't I). So once again I followed her advice. My weekly goal was to write a minimum of 5,000 words per week. Every author is different, for me this is a realistic goal. At times I have the attention span of a gnat and get easily distracted. Yesterday was exactly one month since starting the goal sheet. A total of five weeks. I should have reached a minimum of 25,000 if I'd kept on track. I've done a total (excluding what I'm writing today as I'm not finished) ~ 22,937 words so far. I'll be writing over the weekend (normally I don't), which means I will have reached my goal of 25,000 words for the end of this month. My goals are bang on. Linda's goal sheet works wonderfully. As does her advice and Creative Block Busters. To be perfectly frank here I have to admit, if it wasn't for Linda, no way in hell would I have gotten so far in my novel. I was genuinely shocked when setting up the goal sheet on how soon my novel will be finished. I'd been hoping for end of year, when in fact it will be finished beginning of April. Once finished the first round of edits start, then the second. All this is accounted for. Linda's simple and practical goal sheet and creative block buster is now part of my writing system. I know it works, and not only does it work, but it's vital. Linda, I am so glad you came up with, and shared these practical and easy to achieve writing support systems. You are wonderfully brilliant x x x