I wonder if I’m the only one who does this. When I set a writing goal for the week, I do a strange math-like thing in my head. I gauge how much I can want to finish in a day to get to my goal. For example:
I have 3.25 chapters I want to write this week with 3-4 sections in each chapter. The .25 is a holdover from last week. Each section is 4-11 pages long depending on what is going to happen. I tend to get upset if it’s only 4 pages, but I’m getting better at accepting that some scenes will be short. I can typically write 2 sections a day barring sick child, crushing errands, and other disasters. This means I need to pull off a 3 section day at some point. Can it be done? Well, the challenge with the current book is feeling out a few new characters and dealing with some heavy emotions. I’m nearing the action and the full-on battle.
The verdict: I’ll be cutting it close with this goal. Toes crossed.
Anybody else ever plot stuff out like this or is this a personal insanity?
Legends of Windemere 
I don’t have a weekly goal, but I have a project goal. I keep a spreadsheet and enter the word count for the day and the total word count. I picked that up during nanowrimo last year. I like that it pushes me to write more. I’m shooting for a project average of 1000 words a day. The zero word count days hurt my heart. I’ve had like 3, I think.
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I could never get behind the word count thing. I think I’d freak out and do something desperate if I got too close to the end and was behind.
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I just write what I can. I aim for at least 1000 words a day, but on some days the scenes exhaust me and I can write only 500-700 words. On other days I can pound out 2000 without blinking. For me it’s best to go for an average, say, 5000-7000 a week.
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Thanks. I’m curious about the word limit. What do you do if you hit a the limit and it’s the middle of a chapter or scene? Maybe I’m looking at this as too structured, but going by how people talk about word counts, it seems extremely structured and exact.
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I try for at least 1000 words a day. I’ve found that there’s always a natural stopping point for me in the action.
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That’s probably why I can’t do word counts. I get annoyed if I end mid-chapter scene. Even if it feels like a natural stopping point (dialogue to action change), I can’t bring myself to do it.
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Well, it’s a goal. Sometimes a certain scene exhausts me and I can go no further. Sometimes I look forward to writing a scene and can’t stop myself.
Of course, having a full time job and knowing that I want to be at work by a certain time provides a stopping point of its own.
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Like RL above, I have a project goal and a deadline, but I don’t plot out every day. And, I always leave some room for unplanned events. Like one of my beta readers returning the manuscript almost three weeks late…….and deciding to kill one of my main darlings……..which resulted in rewriting a third of the book in less than a month.
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You or the beta reader decided to kill a main darling?
I’m trying to leave a cushion for distractions, but life seems to repeatedly throw more than I expect. For example, I gave myself a rather low chapter writing amount to do for this week. I aimed for the lowest amount that I typically do since I have to clean the house and cook the dinners. Now, my son is home sick, screaming about wanting to go outside, and has a doctor appointment in an hour. Total derailment for two days because he can’t go back to school tomorrow. More if this is something serious or this is the beginning of another 3 months of him being constantly sent home from school.
I’m annoyed more because I kind of agreed to do a few things for people and this takes me out of those promises.
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Owie. Hope he feels better quick, Charles. Maybe this can fuel some scenes of frustration for a character or two.
I killed off the main darling. My beta reader really liked him, but his story didn’t fit with the rest of it. I still have it, and I can use it elsewhere.
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Poor guy.
I think it’s going to be a while. He’s having water and cupcakes right now. At least he’s letting his lunch sit next to him. It’s some type of virus that is knocking him out pretty badly. Not doing me any favors either.
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The only time I have a goal is when I’m doing Nano… and then, yeah, I do the make-up-for-yesterday-or-tomorrow-when-I-have-plans thing.
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I try to make up for lost time, but it rarely happens. I have a cushion in case I miss a day. It’s just very rare that I only lose a day and I don’t have a week of chaos.
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Yeah, that’s why I don’t set goals. It’s just too frustrating.
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That’s an understatement. Not even 24 hours after my posted goals, I’ve been derailed by a sick toddler and doctor appointment. Haven’t even gone near my novel or done my errands. This pushes the errands back to tomorrow when my wife is home to watch the toddler, but that means I lose more of my writing cushion.
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Just my opinion, but I’ve come to see it as useless, unless I ever come to be in a position to be able to set aside the time as I would going to an outside job. Even to try to work late at night or early in the morning doesn’t cut it if my son keeps me awake all night. I’m simply too tired. Ever fallen asleep on your own novel? Doesn’t do much for the confidence. haha
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Haven’t fallen asleep, but gone the Red Bull route. It isn’t pretty. Not sure what the alternative is.
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Um… yeah, I do this too.
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I guess I am fortunate in that I pick up the pen only when I am inspired to do so…it flows and when it stops flowing I stop… I don’t count words or anything… some days I will write reams, other days I will not be productive at all, although the latter occurs in less regular intervals recently… When I write it is stream of consciousness and I have found trying to force a thought comes through in the writing. But I am fortunate I don’t have deadlines to meet or lofty ambition for my writing… I don’t see the point of writing a thousand words a day…I’ve known people that do things similar to this, a lot of creative writing books seem to take the approach if you want to be a writer you have to write every day one such book recommended to a friend he write 3 pages a day… he suggested it to me and my response was simply I write enough crap as it is I don’t need to write 3 pages a day of what I know will end up as crap because forced writing does not fit my writing style… if I did do deadlines I would probably wait until the last minute and end up burning the midnight oil… I am a bit of a procrastinator… I wrote a training manual once for a former employer I was given two weeks to do it… the night before my deadline I sat in a bar drinking beer watching the game and writing the manual… six hours later and very intoxicated it was complete… billed the company for forty hours which they paid at the rate of double time… my reasoning for my inflated hours… fifty pages… and thousand of training hours saved by having the information at the trainees fingertips… and the average person probably would have taken 40 hours to organize and put together all the information that was required… plus I had to cover my bar tab for that endeavor… the manual became a staple for new hires until the company lost it’s contract four years later… it was a site specific manual.
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It’s those lofty ambitions that get to me. I’m on a mission to prove that I can turn my writing into a career, so every day lost is a day in favor of those who openly want me to fail. I have good days and bad with writing like anyone else. Word count is a little iffy to me. I think it’s like clock watching. I don’t want to pay more attention to the amount of words than what I’m actually doing. I know a lot of authors who use word counts without a problem, but I can’t get my mind to work that way.
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No, I don’t usually have goals, I just write when I feel like it..but then I’m not writing a novel so who knows what might happen then.
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That novel definitely changes one’s perspective.
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Yeah…I thought it probably did.
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I do this . . . sometimes. Sometimes its to keep focus, sometimes it’s to slap my silly head for not doing anything remotely productive for a few days, and sometimes its a method of procrastination in of itself. Because if I make lists of things I’m not doing, at least I’m kinda sorta thinking about it, right?!? I’m more of a word counter, but I do have a weird mathematical outlook on it, which is funny, because numbers hurt.
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Numbers do hurt. That’s why I avoid them at most costs.
I tried to make lists, but I found that I rarely forgot everything. I don’t like procrastinating because I just want to get things done, so I can get to my writing. Once there, I don’t like getting pulled away. So, I guess the best bet to knock me off schedule is to hit me before I start.
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Unfortunately I don’t. But that’s definitely what I meant when I said that you have some neat thoughts inside your brain. You tend to organize/coordinate them in a way that makes your task much easier and more obvious. I wish I had your skills! 🙂
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Not sure how I got into the habit of outlining and planning. I think it came from not having much time to actually write, but I wanted to make some progress. So I designed character write-ups and ways to make the actual writing easier. So, it’s a learned skill that one can get by practice.
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