New With Question Re: Goals

Hi Brandi, welcome to AW.

It's great to have a chunk of time every day to write. Many of us here don't have that luxury. Regarding goals, it is important to have them when writing daily. It's called practicing "BIC," or Butt in Chair. Not my term, but Uncle Jim's. Be sure to start reading the thread titled Learn Writing with Uncle Jim. It's better than most books about writing.

You can set a BIC goal of, say, one solid hour of writing. Or try to generate three pages. Or try for a daily word count. A goal is a good way to actually get something done. Without goals, we might try to write "whenever we have the time." Then six months from now, we have nothing. With a daily goal of three pages, in six months time you will theoretically have the first draft of a novel completed.

When you're working toward your daily goal, your mission is to write. Don't worry about making it wonderful prose. Just get the words down and make it pretty later. Rewrites are what writing is all about.

Good luck, and be sure to check out the rest of the forums.

allen

Brandi said:

thank God for spouses with good jobs and benefits

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Bite me.

But seriously, scheduling? Every writer is different, works at their own pace, has their own goals...

What works for some isn't necessarily what works for you.

You have that luxury of setting your own hours now, play with it for a while. See what your comfort level is. You might only manage an hour or so of real writing. You might find you can go for 2, 4 or even 8 hours. You might manage 250 words, you might manage 5000 words.

The most important thing, and underthecity mentioned it, is BIC and write.

Me, I write in spurts. I get an idea, I sit down and write until I hit a sticking point. Then I'll go do something else until it resolves itself and I go and BIC again.

Hi Brandi,

Welcome to AW. I will be in the same situation soon, right now it's looking like the end of May. I have one novel complete, it's out with a couple agents at the moment, and am well into another one. While working full time, I set my goal at 1500 words per day for the novel. Come May, when I plan to write full time, I will up that to 2500, for fiction that is. I've been freelancing for a while now, and have some good credits to my name, just no time left over to query more articles, so I plan to spend the other 5 hours of my day doing that.

I'm looking forward to editing while I suntan!

I am in the exact same situation as you. I recommend setting yourself "office hours" as though it were your job. It's best if you can have a separate space for writing that is different from where you play, check email, etc. Take a laptop to a coffee house or to a park if needed. Write til the battery runs out.

A page or word count works better than a time limit, but keep it reasonable. Try writing as much as you can for the first three days. Then average your word/page count, and make 75% of that your daily goal. Then meet it, no matter what.

I treat it as a job. I sit down at the computer around 8:30 or 9, fart around for an hour or so (emails, bulletin boards, coffee & cigarettes, etc.) and generally get to work around 10. I work solidly until 2 or 3. Sometimes (like tonight), I also work at night, though that's rare. I'm in a revising stage, so word counts don't work as a goal for me. I usually hit a "wiped" stage, which is when I quit. I don't think I'd be able to force myself past that point, even if I hadn't met my word quota of the day.

I'm in the same boat. I have goals for a first tutorial book. My time is so limited due to my work load. I have learn alot tho about writing, by all the post I have seen so far.

Ultimately, yeah, you'll have to figure out what works for you. It might be a specific amount of time or it might be by page count. It might help if you can set up a bribery system - my muse works for chocolate. Also for Stargate episodes. I know other writers muses that work for elephant writing hats. Well, only once...

It's also likely that you won't be able to write as much as you would like to in the beginning - it takes time (usually) to develop the ability to sit down and write 10 or 20 or 40 pages in a day. What's been your maximum daily output before? Set that as a daily goal and then increase it gradually.

I tend to use a timer and compete against myself to see how many wpm I can get. I've actually used it to find out that 5 and 20 minute spurts don't work for me at all, and neither does anything over 30 minutes, but 15 and 30 minute spurts work very effectively.

You might want to consider joining writing challenges. Nothing like the threat of public humiliation to spur one on!

Try one thing, then another, then another. See what works for you.

underthecity said:

Regarding goals, it is important to have them when writing daily. It's called practicing "BIC," or Butt in Chair.

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LOLOL. That is the funniest thing I've read in weeks. I have a BIC Index of 10 - meaning it sits while I toil away. Unfortunately, it's not spent on writing, as I have a day job being a crosseyed reader. But the weekends are mine, and I treat that like my day job in that I keep regular hours.

Basically, it's whatever works for you. Sometimes the muse hits you between the eyes at 3am. Since you're not working another job, you could take the luxury of getting up and striking while the fire is hot. Oftentimes my work burns inside me, and I have to go scratch the itch.

I set goals when I can but accept that some periods of time must be devoted to other things. I try and pick a specific piece of writing and set a goal that will allow me to finish it within a period, rather than working on whatever project seems most fun at the time.

The BIC method has done wonders for me. I gives me focus and I'm producing a consistent amount of new work everytime I sit down (I do the same 2 hours every night). It feels like a job...but a fun job. I look forward to it every day. Even on those days I just sit there and stare at the screen for a lot of it, I don't mind (though it's as painful as trying to drive a screwdriver through my eye at times). At least I'm not distracted by life, TV, or the net. And I know that I'm working towards a goal that I'll be proud of in the end. Oh yeah, and welcome to AW, Brandi.

goals vary. Stephen King says write 10 pages per day. I used to write for hours. Now, because of joint problems associated with Rheumatism, I write for ten to fifteen minutes at a time, take a break, write, break, etc. However, I do set dates as to when I want a project to be complete and smaller goals for parts of the work to be completed by.