I was in a chat with my NaNoWriMo gang this past November when my buddy Rich started asking me if I’d be aiming for 500,000 words again in 2013. I started to hem and haw about how I hadn’t decided yet, what with not knowing what it would be like with a new baby and all, and then our other buddy Chris popped into the chat and was all, “What are you guys talking about?” and Rich was like, “Hillary isn’t going to try to write half a million words this year with a newborn baby” and Chris was all, “Slacker” and I realized the bastards were making fun of me.
Meaning bastards affectionately, of course.
And I guess, to the outside observer, my half a million word goal for 2012 seemed insane. I didn’t meet it anyway, though I think that had more to do with extenuating circumstances and isn’t a reflection of the goal itself. Do I still believe that I can not only hit 500,000 words a year but exceed it and eventually reach my goal of the million word year? I do.
But it’s not going to be this year. My daughter is going to be a baby exactly once and I want to be able to enjoy every minute of it. It’s already been hard enough to fit day job work in around all the wonderful chaos that she’s brought into our lives and giving myself a ludicrous writing goal would just be an extra level of stress I don’t need. But I didn’t want to not set a writing goal at all because I really like/need some structure and a deadline to force me to write or I let it go for too long and that makes me sad. I also have several projects that I have to finish this year either to fill various commitments or just for my own plans.
So I’ve set a modest goal of 100,000 words for 2013. Modest for me since I usually write 50,000 words (half of this total goal) in a single month during NaNoWriMo. It’s the lowest goal I’ve ever set after a three year stretch of steadily increasing my goals so it feels very weird to take a step backwards like this.
But I’ve picked it because it’s attainable. It boils down to just about 275 words a day which is about 15 minutes for me, an amount of time I might reasonably be able to steal away (though, so far, I’m finding it hard to even get that much some days). It’s also a goal I can easily catch up on with binge writing if I don’t get near the computer several days in a row (which has happened several times already). And it’s a goal I can easily stretch if I find myself magically meeting it early (ha).
I expect what writing I do get done to mostly be work on existing projects and that’s fine. In many ways, this year is different because it isn’t about reaching for anything new but rather focusing more on what I already have both in my personal and writing life. It’s also going to be a year for figuring out how to live my old life in a totally new way and that’s going to be a challenging enough journey.
With a much smaller goal and only a few days left in February, I’m actually already behind as the potato will be happy to show you:
Frustrating. But OK.
The year is young and so is my daughter. There are many days (and hopefully nap times) in the weeks ahead and I look towards them with a cautious hope. I will, eventually, figure out how to balance both motherhood and “me” by taking it day by day. And I’m OK with making 2013 a less productive year because sometimes moving forward means taking a small step backwards first.
How about your writing life? Do you anticipate 2013 being a leap forward or an introspective step backwards? What are your expectations for the year ahead?
Hillary DePiano is a playwright, fiction and non-fiction writer who loves writing of all kinds except for writing bios like this.
