I’ve already completed my goal for August (hitting the 40,000 word mark). Based on the progress I made getting there, I figured that I could make my stretch goal — hitting the 45,000 word mark before the end of the month.
This week wasn’t particularly productive — a couple of outside factors in my life conspired to thwart my progress. Still, as I write this I sit on 43,311 words — 1,689 words short of my stretch goal, with 7 hours and 50 minutes left in the month. Can I do it? I sure hope so. I’m going to keep plugging away at this one, seeing if I can indeed hit 45,000 words by the end of the day.
I’ll update my progress at the end of the night, or early tomorrow.
You know, it is very good to have daily or weekly goals in order make sure you continue making progress over time, but I worry that setting an arbitrary goal like 45k by the end of the month, and then trying to cram it in, will just end up hurting your writing.
If you miss your goal one day, or one week, that’s fine, that’s life. The important thing is to keep moving forward, and to make the quality of your writing the highest priority, not the quantity.
Plus, constantly killing yourself on random evenings to reach a goal can actually make you dislike writing, in the same way that most people dislike jogging when they focus on the bathroom scale.