Realistic Writing Goals

Hi there!

I personally feel there are no real 'rules' in writing. Expectations, yes, maybe, but mostly your own expectations towards yourself.
It's hard to set realistic goals for someone else, but it helps me a lot to write every day. Some days you'll write one sentence or a word, and on others you'll be on a roll and write a whole lot more. But getting writing into your daily routine will benefit you in your skills and will improve your stories!

Write, observe what you do and *then* set goals

I like to set goals just above what I'm currently achieving, thus helping me feel accomplished without a huge amount of extra effort, as well as making it significantly harder to fail and get disheartened.

My goal with writing is to actually finish one of those darn books I have popping around in my head. I'm like one of those dogs from "Up." I can't focus on one darn thing. Fortunately, I am confident that with a little extra discipline, I am more than capable of accomplishing such a goal.

If you can fit it in your schedule, for me it helped a lot simply to set aside a specific daily block of time for writing. Whether it's 2 or 3 hours each day or whatever, after a while you get a sense of how much progress you can make, realistic word count goals etc.

PostHuman said:

If you can fit it in your schedule, for me it helped a lot simply to set aside a specific daily block of time for writing. Whether it's 2 or 3 hours each day or whatever, after a while you get a sense of how much progress you can make, realistic word count goals etc.

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I appreciate the encouragement and the advice! I believe it is good advice indeed. I was writing for an hour a day, but I stopped due to my wacky work schedule. I might be able to try doing that sort of thing again after I go back to school (and hopefully have a more predictable schedule).

I started by setting a goal of around 8 pages a month, due to my work life being pretty hectic.
I ended up srapping that idea and now I've set up a reminder on my phone for every weekend. Even if it's a few pages for a couple hours every weekend it's still something. For me it seems to be working so far.
I've done my first weekend and I've spent the week thinking back on what I've written and what needs to be tweaked.
It's pushed to me to look forward to the next weekend so I can put in some more writing and bang out a few more pages.
I've even found myself trying to put aside an hour or two during the week because I know that what I need to fix won't stick in my head until the weekend.

I think I've separated my goals into two different categories.

1) Productivity (getting drafts done, daily word count)
2) Development (reading, revamping my writing style)

The first one is sort of the daily grind of writing. The day in, and day out stuff. Early on I was quite proud if I could get 150 words in a day, now that seems on the low end, or I better have a good excuse.

The development part is never ending. Reading never hurts, even if it's a book that you're not a fan of, you may learn lessons of what to avoid. I've worked on short stories to tweak my writing style, and try new things. I think it's important take yourself out of your comfort zone. Write in third person if you're stronger in first person, and vice versa. Write in all of the genres.

I like having different levels, so I feel successful (if nothing ever materializes in the form of a sale). I will, at the very least, have a successful experience regardless.

Level One: Expectations - I expect to learn how to write a book properly, and so on.
Level Two: Goals - It is a goal to become published.
Level Three: Pipe Dreams - It is a pipe dream to sell my intellectual property and/or become a best selling author.