Writing Goals Per Week?

I set a session target word count of 2K - I use Scrivener - but I frequently miss my target, if I restrict myself to thinking of it as a daily word count. Sometimes it takes me two or three days to reach that goal, but I'm just happy if it shows I'm making progress. 2K because many of my scenes come in with a nodding acquaintance to that mark.

I wrote my first novel last year, and my only goal was that I had to write every day. Some days it was 15 words, some days it was 1500. I usually averaged about 2500 per week. I wrote every single day from Jan 1st until October 26th when I finished it, and the every-day streak became its own motivation. I can't break my record now. Not when all it takes is ten minutes to keep it up, even on a busy day. I also found it got easier as I went along. My brain knew, this is what happens when I sit down at the keyboard. It's a 'muscle' that gets stronger the more you use it, just like any other.

I'm writing my second novel this year. My writing muscle is a little stronger now, so I'm giving myself month-by-month word count goals. August was 30,000, which I hit. In September my work schedule is somewhat rougher, so my goal is 20,000 and if I make that, it'll be by the skin of my teeth. October will probably be 15,000. But I'm still making it a point to write every single day. For me, the commitment of sitting down every single day and touching it in some way, putting some words down, getting into the writing headspace even for just a few minutes, make a huge difference.

I try to write every day, as much as I can, being flexible around real life struggles. My wish (which doesn't usually happen when I'm also editing) is to write 5 new pages a day. I'm envious of those whose brains can churn out material quickly. I'm something of a slowpoke.

KBooks - yeah, everyone's process is different. Someone over on the September goals thread is churning out upwards of 4K a day and I can only stare in awe. I guess that's the danger of threads like these, comparing one person's process to another. But it gives new ideas to try, I suppose, and if something works, keep it, if not, try something else?

One writer's process

Everyone has their own process. What works for you is a disaster for me. My way bores you to death.

My process is layered. I try to have a big picture and layers of detail. My background is software development and I am used to running projects with tasks, milestones, all visualized in Gant Charts. ProjectLibre (free open source, similar to Microsoft Project) is a nice tool for me. I have the next year laid out in it. I'll be concentrating on Novel 2 from now until 1 Jan 19, back to Novel 1, which is currently out to beta readers, for a few months, then back to Novel 2. Those big blocks are broken into subtasks with estimated durations, etc. I look at my overall project frequently, updating progress, or lack of progress, adding tasks as I see them crop up. I don't emphasize word counts, but I use them when I think they will help structure the work. My goals are mostly in terms of planning or completing scenes, verifying timelines, identifying and implementing subplots, etc.

In addition to the ProjectLibre, I was indoctrinated for years into a corporate "Balanced Scorecard" view of life. For me, in this phase of my life, my balanced scorecard is divided into 4 areas, like a traditional business balanced scorecard, but my areas are: Life, Writing, Platform, and Education. Every day, I lay out goals for myself in each of these areas. My ProjectLibre plan is background long term guidance. Under Life, I might plan to vacuum the living room, read Meister Eckhart, lift weights, music practice, work in my wood shop, and shop for groceries. Under Writing, I might write 2000 words on a scene or chapter, edit a chapter, or read a chapter or two aloud. Under Platform, I might research markets, post to Facebook, write a blog, or prepare for a class I am teaching. Under Education, I might read a book on Blockchain, Aristotle on Poetics, Ursula LeGuin on Steering the Craft, or Jane Friedman on the writing business.

First thing after coffee each morning, which usually starts at 5a for this farm boy, earlier if I can't sleep, I look over my scorecards for the last few days, checking off what is complete, on going, rightly neglected, or in need of attention. (The Life section always has the most neglect.) Then I create a new score card for the day. Each day is a new day and I am flexible. I forward or add goals, some that I know I won't meet, but I want to keep in mind. Often, I abandon goals as events overcome them. I keep this in OneNote. It works for me, but there are hundreds of tools that you could use. Pencil and paper work fine, but I find them messy.

I don't mean that my method will work for everyone, and I am certain that my way of doing it will repulse a lot of people, but if you are looking for a way to organize your creative life, these are some ideas to consider.

I try for 500 words per week. I know, that's practically nothing! But I'm also a grad school student writing my thesis, so my time to write for enjoyment as opposed to academics is limited. I try my hardest to do all of my academic work during the week and my novel writing for the weekend. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't.

I don't think it's my goal because I don't set out to it, but I'm currently doing 100 pages by hand every week. I've been doing that for the past three weeks.

I am a very distractible person. It is a flaw, especially when writing long form.

So much of the process to finding a something one could call discipline in the maelstrom of shinny lights, flashing tubes, and interconnected webs has been a mixture of force and self abuse. Not really, but kinda. Guilt is a motivator for sure, but accountability has helped most of all. Having good friends and colleagues invested in what I'm doing has been among the biggest driving forces and among anything else, what got me to write fiction again.

As for goals, well, I want to write something everyday I can, with a goal of 800 words. If I can't reach that, they roll-over like T-Mobile. So far, I have been able to accomplish it. Given, I ended up clearing the floor in my closet and sitting in there with a pillow and my laptop to get things done, but what works, works.

A lot of interesting and diverse approaches here. Literally the only thing that matters is what works for you, because what gets you to write is what gets you to write.

What got me to actually start writing my book and stick with it every day was adopting the mentality I learned from Tim Ferriss: "Two crappy pages a day." This comes from the mentality that "writer's block is performance anxiety because your standards are too high. Lower your standards until you start." This really worked for me because of my self-criticism. But the creative process should not be allowed to be critical: it must flow and be free. It's a matter of right brain vs. left brain. Use right at first to create the book; use left afterwards to edit the book.

While writing this book I've actually "downgraded" to one crappy page a day due to hitting a slump somewhere around 30k words. Ironically enough, the lower my standard the more I write per day. It's like the less I expect of myself the more I'm driven to exceed my expectations. But I set myself up strategically to handle bad days.

Positive reinforcement is very useful, so my mentality is to set up my expectations to where on my worst day-- depressive; busy; stressed; sleep deprived; brain dead-- I can STILL succeed. So if that's a mere useless 250 words that get deleted or completely re-written later, at least I moved it forward on my worst day. Consistency is king. A mere 250 words a day for 200 days is 50k words. Slow, sure. But it still gets done. My mentality is that moving forward is superior to setting higher goals but staying frozen in place and "failing" too often. And hey, I get to do extra credit most days. Last week I was steadily around 1k per day for example.

What also helps me is I write first thing in the morning before any phone or internet distraction. Phone on airplane mode and I go straight to writing (I like to journal beforehand as a sort of primer).

I like to write every day, but I'm usually lazy on the weekends. If I'm revising, I don't bother with word counts because I can easily spend an hour on a single paragraph. If I'm doing an actual writing day, I aim for 2,000 words.

I'm trying to aim for a minimum of 3500 per week.

If I go over, that's great too! No reason to stop.

I find that I cannot make and stick to an arbitrary word count goal, because I have to be in the zone for the words to come. So, if I sit down and cannot get the words to come, I know that usually means there's an issue with my plot. If I'm not excited to write the next chunk of text in my novel, something is wrong. In a case like that, I'd rather take a day or two to explore what needs to be changed rather than just forcing myself to write a set amount of words when I know that what I'm writing is digging me further into a rut and possibly going to shut my desire to continue down completely.

So, I guess my writing goals are to spend time with the story in whatever is the most productive way possible. My goal is to get to the point where I am itching to sit down an write. If I'm not, I can't force it.

I also set larger goals. Right now, I'm gearing up for NaNo, but I'm already writing because the itching I mentioned above hit early and so I started. I already feel myself slowing down, because what I'm writing honestly is kind of heavy and dark, but I know fun things are on the horizon for my heroine. So my goal is to get to the "Call to Adventure" by November 1st and hopefully the excitement of my heroine's adventure will motivate me during my novel writing adventure!

Obviously my goal for NaNo is 50,000 new words, though I don't think that will come close to completing the novel. And if 50,000 words don't come, I'm not sweating it. I'm going to try, but I will not force them if the "itch" isn't propelling me to write. Which is why I'm trying to set myself up now to be in a part of the story where the "itch" is most likely to remain constant.

I always set goals for myself, but I never actually meet them.... I used to beat myself up over it, but then I realized that it was just counter-productive. I still set goals, but when I don't meet them consistently, tweak them and then try to meet those goals. About a month ago, I told myself I needed to write 1,000 words everyday. Well, it worked for about the first 3 days, then I'd write less and less and then I missed a day because I was just exhausted. So I changed the goal to just write everyday,even if it's only a sentence or two. Well, I still ended up missing a day after about 2 weeks of that, due to life stuff, but I wasn't about to let myself get discouraged. So now, I'm focusing on 5,000 words per week and I've told myself it's okay to miss a day if I need a break. I failed pretty bad on that goal last week, but I'm looking better for this week. We'll see how it goes.... But I'm sure my goals will change in a couple more weeks.

500 words a day is a realistic writing goal. But these 500 words should be a well thought out words that do justice to your talent.

I don't set weekly goals. But I make sure I sit down and type a few hundred words every other day minimum. I set big goals for myself, and when I meet them, I post an EUREKA I DID IT post. And then I set the next goal. The current goal is 10k, and I'm at 6,430.

I've tried various forms of word count goals. None of them work for me for more than a month or so before I become burned out.

I'm thinking maybe I should just make it my goal to do some kind of writing work every day, even if it's just for ten minutes.

I try to set myself a weekly goal, but it doesn't always work. I've been doing pretty good this month with 10,000/week (actually been getting closer to 15k, so that's nice).

It's mostly just setting a schedule of WHEN to write. Blocking out that time in my day is incredibly helpful.

Anyway, I'm the sort who thinks about things for days on end without actually writing any narrative and then sits down and writes all day, churning out several thousand words.

Click to expand...

Insolentlad, I do exactly this. Sometimes I will meet in the middle and type out thousands of words of just scripts. Often not touching them until months (even years!) later to turn them into completed prose, once I'm in the head-space to think about where they are, set pieces they interact with, what they smell, etc.

Whatever works, right?

I think what has helped me the most is, confusingly enough, continuously changing and updating my goals all the time. Right now I'm on the “I want this novel at 100 000 before April and that means 800-1000 per day”, but I usually get a lot out of Nanowrimo style goals myself, and I'm currently not as busy as I normally am.

Other times I aim for things like “I'm going to spend an hour before bed planning this plot while I fall asleep.” because sometimes that's all I have the time for. Doesn't mean I'm not working, even if I don't write down a single word. I remember all the bits that are good enough to remember, and that's more than enough for me. (It's like pre-edititing lol.)

Deadeyemouse said:

I am a very distractible person. It is a flaw, especially when writing long form.

So much of the process to finding a something one could call discipline in the maelstrom of shinny lights, flashing tubes, and interconnected webs has been a mixture of force and self abuse. Not really, but kinda. Guilt is a motivator for sure, but accountability has helped most of all. Having good friends and colleagues invested in what I'm doing has been among the biggest driving forces and among anything else, what got me to write fiction again.

As for goals, well, I want to write something everyday I can, with a goal of 800 words. If I can't reach that, they roll-over like T-Mobile. So far, I have been able to accomplish it. Given, I ended up clearing the floor in my closet and sitting in there with a pillow and my laptop to get things done, but what works, works.

Click to expand...

Having other people invested is a big help. One of my friends/productivity buddy very kindly semi-bullied me into self-publishing my children's book and doing the cover for it (I would never have thought of doing it myself). Another gently nagged me into sharing it on Facebook, again I wasn't going to bother as I'd emailed most people I knew, but others are sharing it now on there. I probably won't sell more than 2 or 3 more copies but it's encouraging that others are helping get it out there.

rwm4768 said:

I've tried various forms of word count goals. None of them work for me for more than a month or so before I become burned out.

I'm thinking maybe I should just make it my goal to do some kind of writing work every day, even if it's just for ten minutes.

Click to expand...

Low and flexible expectations really work for some people, I'm one of them.

I like making goals, but I find that sometimes if I don't make my goals, it leaves me feel like I have failed. That's why I try not to make super specific goals like: write 1000 words by the end of the day. Instead, I start with smaller and more achievable goals such as: I will write today for as long as I can. And then when I start getting into the swing of things, I make more specific goals like I will finish this chapter, I will write this many words etc.
Goals are great because they can give us something to work towards. I've learned to be kinder to myself when I don't achieve them, however. We're only human after all.

When I started freelancing I set a goal of 1000 words a day. That may, or may not, seem like a lot to you. It was a good chunk of my free time each day and writing Roleplaying Games meant a ton of math and rules as part of those 1000 words. I maintained this pace for many years and one day I stopped. Now I write in spurts. I'll crank 10 000 words in a day and then go back and edit. I do a lot of prep-work now, so there will be many days of prep followed by a really intense writing bing. I'm writing a story about a Vampire going to Mars and there is a ton of information about Mars out there so I have ended up doing a lot of research. Vampires aren't very realistic but Mars is and the more research I do, the more grounded the story will end up.

- Mark Charke

A set goal freaked me out because I felt like a failure if I didn't meet it. I work full-time (like most of us, I'm sure), so I just tried to squeeze in a few hours in the morning and then the bulk of it on weekends. At first, I thought I'd never hit any sort of word count at that pace, but I managed to pop out ~100K words in 4 months...albeit they are in need of serious editing. Slow and steady wins the race!

Because I've taken a long break from writing and when I did write it was unsuccessful because I never actually completed a book.
I've set myself very easy, achievable goals. Yesterday, it was to read three articles on how to Plot. The day before it was to watch a documentary on the subject I've chosen to write about. My goal today was to get this account re-started again and start answering questions as I find this very helpful. It gets me thinking and gets me creative.
Tomorrow my goal is to get my ideas down on paper. (this is a new idea so in the early stages)

I can't always stick to my goals because I have a life to live and life can throw you curve balls. And since I'm so rusty at the moment, I set myself easy goals that I want to achieve, this motivates me. And I try to do it as the same time every day. That way I get into a routine, not just with writing but the rest of my life. I come in, I get a coffee and a snack and I do my goal for one hour. Then make diner, walk the dog, shower and so on. Then chill out and watch TV. Same weekends.

I want to write every day, like the thread in Goals and Accomplishments, and I want to edit each day as well- as that is one area I am lagging behind in.

Today, I already achieved success in rewriting (while editing) a story I'm working on.

I also want to implement a new writing technique of writing a certain amount of words per hour, or every couple hours, to increase word count (without being stressed about it) during the day.