You know when you start off with a great goal in mind and life gets enough in the way to completely distract you? It occurred to me that this may have happened at the start of January when I spent the evening after long days of work playing the Sims 4 instead of completing part one of my first novel.
I think the distraction really dawned on me when I got a glitch where my very exhausted, decaffeinated sim tried drinking earl grey tea while a cat was stuck to her wrist. Something about that moment made me sit up a little in my office chair and think, "Huh...while I'm here trying to figure out how my Sim is successfully drinking tea while holding a cat, I really should be writing. Also, I don't recognize the big black rectangle in the screen next to the dinning chair..."
Well, I'm here to make good on that promise and maybe back-track to a goal that's a bit easier to tackle.
I know, editing's not so bad, but clearly my attempts to commit to this goal have been failing to keep my attention--mostly because my NaNoWriMo victory did not result in my part one being completed.
I don't like leaving things undone before I move on to the next thing, so I'm going to finish part one--then skip editing and move on to finish book one as a whole. I did not do so hot on the last promise I made, so, how to keep myself in check?
A dear friend would cry excel spread sheets to the heavens until my ears bled but I refuse on the grounds that I don't want to--because I really have trouble maintaining my excel spread sheets.
(Actual footage of me using Microsoft Excel)
No, what I need is a less complicated system to work off of that motivates me to keep going. It helped me a lot, say, during NaNoWriMo when I could use the website's tracker to build up my word count a little at a time. Mind you I'm about 100% positive that I'll have to shave an obscene amount of words down in editing when the time comes...
--But for the time being I can at least focus on getting my first draft written. That's always been an effective tool when it comes to NaNoWriMo, working towards a word count goal. Now, in the past, NaNoWriMo's goal tracker software was only available on the website during the month of November. I may be late to the party on this one (as I usually can be) but now NaNoWriMo's website offers a completely customizable Goal Tracker for you to use!
So that's how I'm going to motivate myself to get back into my writing. I've got a new years resolution to keep, after all.
So this is me, getting back on track with my goal. I'll start small and get my confidence back up enough to get flying through the rest of this manuscript. I'll start with a measly 30,000 words. This includes the end of the first part of my novel, the second and the epilogue portion that will complete the first manuscript. I'll give myself a generous amount of time to do so--rather than a month I will be working through March---so that I may be in time to continue the project for Camp NanNoWriMo. As for my words per day? according to the tracker, 468 words per day is my goal to finish on time. So far so good, so here's what my results should look like:
Perfect! Now to really commit to it, I'll add a page on The Sokulski Review for a secondary place to plug in my progress. Being able to share my progress was something that really motivated me this last year during NaNoWriMo, so why not throw that practice back into the mix? As of today, I will be beginning a new writing goal and plugging in words to my goal tracker. Want to compete with your own 2018 writing goal? Go for it by clicking the links above. My goals can be tracked right here: Goal Tracker 2018.
The year just started and I've dragged my feet enough. Time to get writing once again!