7 Tips for Making and Reaching Writing Goals

It's the most wonderful time of the year, when writers everywhere close their doors, substitute well-balanced meals for leftover Halloween candy, and use sticky-notes as pillows.

It's NaNoWriMo, a month where writers try to complete 50,000 words of a novel within the month of November. I know many people who have written novels thanks to NaNoWriMo, and many others whom have planned and plotted for it, only to write 5,000 words or so for it (I was one of those people for three years.) Others have no interest in participating it.

And all of that is absolutely fine.

Not to shock anyone, but everyone's different. For some people, the goal of writing 50k in November is reasonable and desirable, and for others, it's not. I fall into the latter category, and have felt guilty about it. What we need to realize, however, is that writing 50k in November is a rather arbitrary goal.* What's helpful, then, is to set goals that work for you, ones which fit with your priorities, schedule, long-term goals, etc. 

So, how would you go about creating those goals?

1. Get Rid of Guilt. Your friend wrote a first draft in a week, and yours has taken you three months. If you didn't know about your friend's success and are happy with your progress, there is no reason to view yourself  as an inadequate. Set goals, do your best to reach them, and forget about what your friends are doing/have done (or, better yet, cheer them on!) Also, as a writing community? We need to stop making people feel guilty about their goals. If you can write a novel in a year and someone else needs two, and is happy with that, please don't make them think they need to alter their goals. We're all different and we should all support each other.

2. Don't Underestimate Yourself. Get rid of guilt, yes, but challenge yourself. You are awesome, so be awesome. Set goals which are reasonable, but ones which will push you. You may surprise yourself.

3. Don't Overestimate Yourself. As a student and a writer, sometimes I feel guilty for making an effort to always get seven or eight hours of sleep, because it seems like no one around me does. But, I know myself, and know that I need sleep to function well, and that I'm not pleasant to be around when I don't get it. Whatever sleep represents for you, don't feel like you have to give it up to reach an extraordinary goal. Chances are that you'll burn out, get discouraged, etc. Make sure that you give yourself time to rest as you work towards your goals.

4. Make Goals According to Your Priorities. At this point in my life, writing is not my priority. God, my family, friends, school, and the student society I'm part of all come before it. Some of that will change, and some of it won't. If something comes before writing for you, don't be afraid to put it before writing, even if it means you'll fall short of your goal. This leads into:

5. Have Grace with Yourself. There will probably be a time where you don't reach your goal, and that's ok. Life happens and not always in the ways we expect it too, and there's always a chance that it'll interfere with our goals. Let it, and don't feel guilty about it. The world will go on, you'll get things back on track, and you'll be fine. Promise.

6. Alter Your Goals if Necessary. Again, your life will change, your priorities will change, and maybe not when you expect them too. Don't feel like you need to stick to goals which are no longer possible or desirable.

7. Reward Yourself. Because you're awesome and deserve it.

Note that with all of these points, I'm assuming that you make goals based on deadlines (if you have them), and am not suggesting that you should ignore them.

Good luck to everyone participating in NaNo, and to everyone else with different goals!

*I don't mean to discredit NaNo in any wya, as I think it's an awesome program and a great goal for some people to try for. 

Update

On the Playlist: One by One - Robert Francis

This is a self-indulgent post written at midnight on an adrenaline rush. Don't say you weren't warned.

This post is just a quick update to let all of you know where I've been, what I've been up to, and when the blog will get back on its feet.

For the past two weeks, I've been in a fairly intense amount of pain. Now, there are three unrelated reasons for this pain, none of which should worry you. It's all pain I was supposed to have; for example, I got my wisdom teeth out last Saturday, and it's probably a good thing that I was in pain from it, but it didn't feel that way when I was living off a diet of milkshakes and jello. I was prescribed painkillers after I got my wisdom teeth out, with this magical little drug in them called codeine that made me useless. They didn't make me that dopey (though I did once try to pay for food in my school's cafeteria with my keys instead of my meal card), but they did make me tired as anything. I'm a university student, so I have class and homework. I'm also on the leadership team of my school's Christian Fellowship, so I have meetings to attend, and this past week we had an event that I helped to plan and run (I could've planned the date of the event better, eh?) Those are my priorities. They do leave time for writing and blogging and all that fun stuff, but that's now how I spent that time this past week. Thanks to codeine, I spent it sleeping (I also spent a fair amount of time wallowing in self-pity and watching guilty pleasure TV, like Dancing With the Stars.)

Needless to say, I fell behind on NaNoWriMo pretty quickly. Even before I got my wisdom teeth out, I was in pain for other reasons, and as much I wish it was, writing just isn't as important as school, the Christian Fellowship, and of course, keeping myself healthy. I called it quits around the end of the first week.

But, those weren't the only reasons I decided not to NaNo. At the end of October, I was stuck on revisions for Building Forts. Like, I've been trying to revise a scene for two weeks and just can't do it stuck. But, once I started my NaNo project, the inspiration for Building Forts came back. I'd kind of expected it to, but I didn't expect it to happen so quickly, nor did I expect to be as inspired as I was. I mentally worked through some of the major issues in the first draft that I realized were preventing me from revising specific scenes, and once I had those figured out, all I wanted to write was Building Forts. So, that's what I'm writing now. The revisions are quickly turning into total rewrites, but that's ok. It's better and I love it again.

Now, I'm not in pain, the event with the Christian Fellowship is over, and there's no longer codeine running through my system. School, however, has not gone away. In fact, it's probably busier than it's been all semester from now until Christmas break. Blogging won't be as slow as it's been lately, but it'll still be slow, and I'm sorry for that. It's not just because I'm busy with school, but being sick and/or on medication like I've been tends to put me in a bit of a mental funk, so I need to take some time to bounce back from that.

And that's what's going on with me. If you read all of that, I owe you a virtual cookie. Seriously.

'Twas the Night Before NaNo

On the Playlist:  No Curtain Call - Maroon 5

Well friends, it's 10:58PM on Halloween. Who knows what that means?

If you gussed In sixty-two minutes, Bri will stare at her computer screen for approximately four minutes before beginning to type something along the lines of, "fgjfdhds", then deleting it, then typing, "I'm an idiot", then deleting it, then writing a first sentence of a new WIP that she will (hopefully) finish by November 30, you would be correct! And you know me far too well.

November 1 is the start of NaNoWriMo, where a bunch of crazy ambitious writers try to write 50 000 words before November 30. I've blogged before about what I hope to achieve with NaNoWriMo, and now I will tell you what I'm planning to write and how I've prepared.

My novel is called Like a Bad Country song, and here is the terrible synopsis:

Tiffany and Adelle have spent their lives in the small town of Chillicothe, Texas. Tiffany's parents are, and always were, happily married. Adelle's parents are not, and never were, in her life; instead, her grandmother is her guardian. Tiffany is the captain of her high school's pom squad. Adelle's position on the pom squad is to be the tenth member they need to compete. Tiffany has had the same boyfriend, Ethan, since she was five. Adelle's never been kissed.  Tiffany hates Chillicothe. Adelle loves it.

But when Tiffany and Ethan have sex at the start of their senior year, it sets off a chain of changes in the girls' lives.  For the first time in seventeen years, Tiffany and Adelle must change themselves to handle what their lives have become.

Now, you may be (and probably should be) asking, "Bri, why is your synopsis...not a synopsis? It tells us about the characters, but nothing about the plot."

That's because I have no plot beyond that. 

Sure, I have some ideas for scenes and whatnot, but I really don't know where this novel is going at all. I do, however, know my characters. This is not new to me; all of my stories start with characters, and without real plots. The characters show me the plot as I write.

So, how have I prepared for NaNoWriMo? I haven't, really. I, obviously, have no outline. I do, however, have a ridiculous amount of leftover Halloween candy and Diet Coke, which should get me through until I find a plot. It's worked before.

I plan to post every Sunday night about how my week went NaNo-wise. This will be incredibly embarrassing, because I will fall behind on wordcount, I will have moments where I'm sure that I can't do it, and I might even do the unthinkable and delete scenes because guys, when I write crap, I write crap.

But I think this will be a lot of fun, and if nothing else, I'll have more words than I did at the beginning of November. I am really excited to write at midnight.

NaNo'ers, tell me about your project! How have you prepared for NaNo? Do you know your characters? Plots? Do you have an outline? Do you have lots of chocolate? Let me know in the comments!

NaNoWriMo

On the Playlist: Hey Ya - Obadiah Parker

What I predict my life will look like this November.

Well, I did it. I signed up for National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo) this year. It's not my first time. Back in 2008, I said I was going to do it without joining the site, checking out the forums, or, uh, knowing how to write. I may have written 1k, but even that's iffy. Last year, I told myself that I was going to do it, and that I was going to do it right. I made an account, posted on the forums, planned to go to my city's events, all that fun stuff. The moment November began, I was writing, and for the duration of November 1, I kept up a good pace. But come November 2, 3, 4, and so on, I fell behind. Way behind. And I decided that I hated my novel and tried to change it, but I hated what I changed it to, so I changed and back, and you can guess the rest. Needless to say, I did not win last year. I'm not sure I event hit 5k.

To me, my two failures meant that NaNoWriMo just wasn't for me. It wasn't because I was hasty, lazy, or indecisive. So, I wasn't going to do it this year. I had a novel to revise, research papers to write, leadership meetings for the Christian Fellowship to attend, a small group for the Christian Fellowship to run, and friends who may occasionally want to see me. That was (and still is) more than enough for me.

But there were three things I learned about myself as writer as I worked on my first novel:

1. I'm hasty.

2. I'm lazy.

3. I'm indecisive.

Ultimately, my goal with NaNoWriMo is not to win, though that would be awesome and certainly is one of my goals. However, as long as I'm faster at writing first drafts come December 1, I'm happy. That's what I hope to get from NaNo.

Fellow NaNo'ers, why are you doing it? Is it just to have 50 000 more words than you had in October, or do you have another goal in mind?

And if you're a fellow NaNo'er, I'm bri_ness over there. Come say hi and be my buddy!