Setting Goals: A New Post
October 12, 2024 by Harvey
In today’s Journal
* A New Short Story
* Setting Goals
* Harvey’s Notes to Earth
* Of Interest
* The Numbers
A New Short Story
“Empirita Sanchez de Uvalde” went live yesterday at 10 a.m. on my Stanbrough Writes Substack. It’s also an excerpt from one of my Blackwell Ops novels. Go check it out.
Setting Goals
This is a topic I feel compelled to revisit now and then. Since we’re entering the final quarter of the year, it might be timely for some of you.
In a recent issue of TNDJ, I mentioned I’ve recently readjusted my goals.
A few days ago I started Blackwell Ops 29: John Quick. Between then and midnight, December 31, my goal is to write 6 novels and 13 short stories.
(Speaking of which, I hope you Bradbury Challenge participants get your story titles, word counts, and genres in before the Journal goes live on Monday. If you aren’t in the Challenge yet and you’d like to be, feel free to jump in.)
My adjusted goal is a quarterly goal. Notice that no specific word counts are involved. I’ve already taken that into account with a daily word-count goal.
I could easily figure out how many words I need to write in the quarter by multiplying my daily word count goal times the number of days remaining in the year, but that’s silly.
Note also that I don’t have to actually MEET my daily word count goal (3000 wpd) every day to achieve that. I only have to STRIVE to meet my daily word count goal each day.
If I do that, the quarterly and annual goals and numbers (and the novels and short stories) will take care of themselves. And if you do that, yours will too.
First, the difference between Dreams and Goals. Both are perfectly valid. But dreams are not something that are within your control.
For example, you can dream of becoming a bestselling author, but that’s largely outside your control.
You can control the writing and how much you write. You can control your covers and your sales copy and your marketing plan. But at the end of the day, you can’t control how many people actually buy your book.
Goals, on the other hand, are most often completely within your control.
Yes, there are exceptions. Life happens. Emergencies come up. Natural disasters strike.
But those exceptions are why I stress that Average is what matters.
I start on the little end. In setting goals, for me, everything begins with a Daily Word Count goal of 3000 words per day. That number is comfortable for me, but on some days I still have to stretch to reach it. If it was easy all the time, I would increase it to 3500 or 4000 wpd.
That’s me. But you can start on the big end if you want. You can set a goal for the year, and you don’t have to begin on January 1. Any 12-month or 52-week or 365-day calendar time period is still a year.
But I recommend dividing that annual goal by 365 so you know how many words of fiction you must write each day (on average) to reach that annual goal
For example, if you want to write 1,000,000 words of fiction in a year, you will have to write 2740 words per day (on average).
With that number in the back of your mind, you’re telling your creative subconscious what you would like to do and that you need its help. And it will do everything it can to help you reach your goal.
What do I mean by that? In a quiet little voice, your creative subconscious will suggest characters and stories. It will give you story starters and story ideas. It will urge you to not think, to let it run free and play.
It will give you a reason to sit down at the computer or pull your legal pad and your pen into your lap and start writing.
And that’s usually where the first big “application” obstruction hits: No matter how much input you creative subconscious gives you, you have to act on it.
Your conscious, critical mind will try to tell you there are other things you have to do first, like feed the dog or fill his bowl with water or start the laundry or… or… or… anything to put off the actual writing.
There’s only one way to get beyond that: You have to apply the seat of your pants to the seat of your chair (Right Now) and actually put the words on the page.
But back to setting goals—You can also start at the “big end” by setting a quarterly goal or a monthly goal or a weekly goal.
Again, I recommend you divide that goal by the number of days in the quarter or month (or by 7 for a week) to give yourself and your creative subconscious a more intimate way to keep track of where you are and where you need to go.
One caveat—If you set a weekly goal (for example) of say 10,000 words per week but you already know you can write only 4 days per week, divide your weekly goal by 4. (You’ll have to write 2500 words per day on average on your writing days.)
Again, that will give your creative subconscious some guidance, and in return, it will help you achieve what you want to do. Same old story—you eat an elephant one bite at a time.
Maybe most important of all, on days when you “fail”—when you don’t write at all or fall short of your daily goal—Don’t Let It Get You Down.
If you let it bug you, it will open the door to the conscious, critical mind with “Why bother?” or “What’s the use?” or other unhelpful nonsense.
Why bother? Because although you didn’t meet your daily goal, you still wrote more than you would have if you didn’t HAVE a daily goal. Total win. Take that, critical voice.
And tomorrow the goal resets to zero and you start with a clean slate. So what if you didn’t reach your goal yesterday? Today is another day to reach it. Or exceed it.
Always remember that no matter how you set your writing goals, everything depends on Averages.
Only You are the boss of you. Just keep writing.
Harvey’s Notes to Earth
In Harvey’s Notes to Earth, a new, occasional newsletter, I talk about the characters and settings that populate my fictional worlds.
Sometime in the next few days I’ll post the second issue. In the first issue, I talked about the genesis of Blackwell Ops. To see that issue click here.
Click the button at the bottom of that post to subscribe. It’s free, and the newsletter will arrive in your inbox only once a month or so.
Talk with you again soon.
Of Interest
How to Choose Your Amazon Kindle & Book Keywords [2024 Updated]
The Numbers
The Journal……………………………… 1150
Writing of Blackwell Ops 29: John Quick
Day 1…… 1781 words. To date…… 1781
Day 2…… 3792 words. To date……. 5573
Day 3…… 3087 words. To date……. 8660
Fiction for October……………………. 38060
Fiction for 2024……………………….. 777568
Nonfiction for October……………….. 12950
Nonfiction for 2024……………………. 316540
2024 consumable words……………… 918147
Average Fiction WPD (October)……… 3278
2024 Novels to Date……………………….. 14
2024 Novellas to Date……………………… 1
2024 Short Stories to Date………………… 17
Novels (since Oct 19, 2014)…………..……. 96
Novellas (since Nov 1, 2015)………………. 10
Short stories (since Apr 15, 2014)………..… 254
Short story collections…………………….….. 29
I am a prolific professional fiction writer. You can be too. On this blog I teach Writing Into the Dark and adherence to Heinlein’s Rules.
Unreasoning fear and the myths of writing are lies. They will always slow your progress as a writer or stop you cold. I will never teach the myths on this blog.
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I have a word count goal spreadsheet I made several years ago. It's not pretty but I understand it and it works for me. The basic unit for me is the week, Monday through Sunday. My goal is 1,000 words per day M-F and 500 wpd Saturday and Sunday.
So, 6,000 words per week. One row of the spreadsheet is 3 weeks (that's what fits comfortably). Then below the weeks, I have monthly goals. My monthly goal is 26,000 words. And my annual goal is 312,000. I also have quarterly goals.
At a glance, I can see how I'm doing that day, that week, month, quarter and annually.
I also give myself mini challenges--I'll figure out how many wpd I need to meet a monthly or quarterly goal.
I have yet to make my annual goal. I'm pretty low this year at just under 108,000 so far.
But look, that's 108,000 words of fiction.
Now I just need to get better at publishing them! I need to work out getting covers, the actual uploading AND continuing to write, all concurrently...
I did start publishing folders as you suggested, Harvey and an IP spreadsheet.
Since I finally started writing again in more than hit or miss fashion this past spring, I've been setting a 20k word count goal for each month. If I hit it, great. If I bypass it, fabulous. If I miss it, I don't stress about it. Progress is progress, as far as I'm concerned. Stressing about it definitely doesn't help. I learned that the hard way the past few years while my mom underwent cancer treatments and I've dealt with health issues of my own.