My 2011 Writing Goal

That’s behind schedule, in case you were curious. Yes, my friends, this year I’m going for 500,000 words in 2011. What counts?

• New fiction
• Non-fiction intended for eventual publication: personal essays, articles, ebooks, etc
• Article style blog posts. Meaning those rambling, middle of the night personal posts don’t count but the ones I write up to be all SEO useful and formal do.
• Editing of anything intended for sale or publication at a rate of 1000 words per hour (because I write at a rate of over 2000 words an hour so that’s less than half capacity)

As for those projects that never seem to get done, I’ve assigned myself one a month to make sure they all finally are finished. In fact, part of the reason I’ve never been caught up is because 59% of my writing so far this year has been editing Mistress Novel (because January is Finish Editing Mistress Novel month) and editing is less of a word count payoff.

(Like how I busted out that 59%? You should see my spreadsheet for this year’s goal. It takes my writing statistics insanity to a whole new level. :-))

Where did 500,000 words come from? Well, every year around NaNoWriMo time, you get those writers who think they are God’s gift to the trade going on about how writing 50,000 words in a month is stupid because they write that much every month. Then you follow those same people on Twitter and find out most of them write less than 50K a year and you roll your eyes. At least I do.

But I thought it might be a nice benchmark for myself to use the NaNoWriMo goal of 50k and to try to hit that every month because November is really the only month where I really feel like I am truly writing all the time. Of course, 12 times 50K is actually 600,000 but my goal is based on writing that much 10 months out of the year for the simple reason that I think I should give myself a little leeway in case I have unforeseen complications like the ole hands routine of 2010.

Some stats:

• To reach 500,000 words for the year, I’ll need to average 1,370 a day.
• I’m currently averaging 1227 a day. (So close!)
• That breaks down to 649 words a day on average and an average of 36 minutes of editing a day so far.
• Right now, my word count is working out to be a 50/50 split between editing and writing.
• Last year, I didn’t hit 25,000 words until March 9th. I already reached 25,000 words on January 21st. <- Holy cow!!

How I feel about it so far

• Weirdly, you’d think being in a constant state of being behind would be discouraging but it isn’t because I’ve never been *that* far behind. I’ve always been less than 5k away from the goal which is an amount I can make up in a good evening so I’m not worried…yet. But I wanted a challenge this year and, boy howdee, I’ve given it to myself. I definitely can’t slack off this year.
• I want to keep it at an even 50/50 between writing and editing. I have so many projects that need to be edited and I’m already digging around for them because I know I’ll have to work on them to meet my quota. So that’s one of my big strategies this year for getting stuff done that’s been hanging around for years: I have to do as much editing as I do new writing to force me to do a ton of editing this year.
• It has, without a doubt, been making me write more. So many nights I open my WIP for just one more hour because I know it will buy me a few more words. Will I be able to stay at this pace all year or get burned out? Remains to be seen, my friends. 🙂 But I think its better to set a goal that is a stretch rather than one that’s too easy to reach.

Unlike last year, I’m hoping to not have to make any changes to this goal on the fly so I spent a lot more time in advance of the year planning things out and anticipating issues so I wouldn’t have to tweak later. I know already that 2011 is going to be a wild and crazy year for me and my writing career and my writing goal reflects that in a big way. (Sorry I can’t be more specific but you’ll understand soon enough.)

So, having stuck with me last year, do you think I adjusted my goals realistically? What goals did you set for yourself this year? Did you miss the potato?