Goals vs. Dreams

December 4, 2024 by Harvey

In Today’s Journal

* Quote of the Day
* Selfish and Stupid Is a Bad Mixture
* The December ‘Run With Harvey’ Challenge
* Goals vs. Dreams
* The Numbers

Selfish and Stupid Is a Bad Mixture

Fifty-six people die in southeast Guinea from violence and crowd surge following a controversial call made by a referee at a soccer match.

What? 56 people died and 56 families were devastated over a ‘controversial call…at a soccer match’? Yeah, I know it’s happened before. So why was anyone at that soccer match in the first place?

I can only hope those 56 people were there only to create hatred and discontent in the first place.

Sorry. Not about writing unless you get a story idea out of it. Sometimes I just have to shake my head and drop a comment. This was over a freakin’ GAME!

Okay, now let’s get back to the not-real world of writing….

The December ‘Run With Harvey’ Challenge

I’m surprised and happy to report that thus far, two writers have leapt with both feet into the December Challenge! Frankly, that’s two more than I expected. (grin)

Good on you for believing in yourself!

To briefly reprise, the challenge is to write 2325 words per day for the rest of December beginning on December 4th.

If you’re late to this opportunity, you can still jump in, but your daily goal will be a little higher. You still need to meet or exceed 65,100 words for the month.

I recommend starting with a daily goal of 2500 wpd. That will net you 67,500 words for the month even if you don’t begin until December 5!

And if you fall short of your daily goal a few times, chances are you’ll still hit the monthly goal and be eligible for the prizes. Hey, I’m giddy over here.

By the way, IF YOU WANT, you can report your numbers to me once a week. You don’t have to, but if it will help you, please feel free. I’ll keep a running tally.

Goals vs. Dreams

Some of you have heard me talk about this before. This particular article, judging from some of the time capsules in it, is from June 2015. Enjoy.

We all have dreams, and that’s good. Folks should dream and yearn and long for whatever.

But we should also have goals. What’s the difference? Simple.

A dream is something that is not within your control. You can hope for it, and you can want it more than you want anything else, but whether or not you attain a dream is outside of your direct control.

You can even work toward it to increase your chances, but even when you do everything right, whether you attain a particular dream is still out of your hands. It’s up to other people.

A goal is something that IS within your control.

Can you write a 60,000 word novel in a month?

Yes.

Can you publish that novel and have it available on every continent and in most major countries (over 100 countries) within a few days of finishing it?

Yes.

The best goals are those that reset regularly.

I say that for three reasons:

• A recurring goal will push you whether you attain it or fall short.

• A recurring goal is forgiving. You soon realize if you fall short, the sky won’t cave in.

• A recurring goal leads to streaks, and streaks are pure gold.

I have two short-term goals. I have a goal to write 3,000 words of publishable fiction per day. That goal resets every morning when I get out of bed.

If I met or exceeded my goal the day before, I’m farther along in my WIP. And then today, I still need to write 3,000 words. But if I DIDN’T reach my goal yesterday, well, yawn, stretch, that’s okay. Today, I need to go write 3,000 words.

My other short-term goal, when it started, was to write a new, original, complete short story and publish it every week for a year.

So far, I haven’t fallen short on that one yet. And that year (as of today, actually) has turned into a streak of 63 weeks without missing. Woohoo! (grin) Man, that’ll make you feel good.

And I have one long-term goal. It’s to write 1,000,000 words of publishable fiction this year. (Yeah, that was back in 2015.)

Now, today is June 22 and my word count for the year right now (as of yesterday) was only 388,020. That’s pretty good, but it ain’t a million words per year.

In fact, it boils down to this: In the first 172 days of the year, I wrote 2256 words per day (publishable fiction).

By the way, I recommend you run the numbers on yourself every now and then just to see where you stand. You might surprise yourself.

If I continue at that same pace, over the remaining 193 days of this year, I’ll add another 435,394 words. That will bring my total for the year to 823,414. Not bad, but not a million. Sigh.

That’s okay. Know what? That goal resets as well.

And the sole purpose of any writing goal or challenge is to have fun and grow as a writer.

Talk with you again soon.

The Numbers

The Journal…………………………… 850

Writing of Blackwell Ops 32: Jack Twist

Day 1…… 3528 words. To date…… 3528
Day 2…… 3136 words. To date…… 6664
Day 3…… 4540 words. To date…… 11204
Day 4…… 6376 words. To date…… 17598

Fiction for December………………… 14052
Fiction for 2024………………………. 941973
Nonfiction for December…………….. 4010
Nonfiction for 2024…………………… 366580
2024 consumable words…………….. 1,132,592

Average Fiction WPD (December)…. 4684

2024 Novels to Date…………………….. 17
2024 Novellas to Date…………………… 1
2024 Short Stories to Date……………… 31
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..… 101
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)…………… 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)……… 268
Short story collections……………………. 29

Disclaimer: Whatever you believe, unreasoning fear and the myths that outlining, revising, and rewriting will make your work better are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.

Writing fiction should never be something that stresses you out. It should be fun. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules. Because of WITD and because I endeavor to follow those Rules I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too.