Ninety Thousand - My Magic Number (Melissa Robbins)

This year, WARA has challenged their members to a word writing contest. The winner will be based on percentage completed, so the writer who struggles writing 25,000 words can compete with the published authors who have several book contracts.

Ninety-thousand words. That's my writing goal for the year. Seems pretty daunting, doesn't it? How did I come up with this magic number? Most of the stories I write have 85,000 words, but I have 70,000 words for a story I should finish and 20,000 for one I started last November for Nanowrimo. Ninety-thousand might just finish both stories or at least one!

But 90,000 is still a big number, so I broke it down. Being able to break a goal down in manageable mini-goals is key or you'll go stark-raving mad. I created a spreadsheet with equations. My engineering husband is so proud. For a yearly goal of 90,000, that's 7,500 words per month, 1731 words a week, 246 words a day (Hey, it's a leap year! We get an extra day!). Two hundred forty-six words is less than a page a day. That's doable, right? Okay maybe not for me last week, but editing can really slow a writer down and that's what I was doing. I rocked the word count earlier in the month, so I should still meet my monthly goal. Correction, I will meet my monthly goal.

Since the group is tracking their percentages, I added an equation on my handy-dandy spreadsheet that tracks my monthly and yearly percentage goals. I have reached 78.29% of my goal for January and 6.52% for yearly goal. Another trick I found helpful for tracking are the number rows. One for January 1st and down the column.

We'll have to see how I do. I'm not one to keep New Year's resolutions, but I prefer to write than exercise, so I may just keep this goal.

4 comments:

Reese Mobley said...

You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it. You can do it.

I know you can!

Pat Davids said...

You go, Melissa.
90,000 is a lofty goal but you can get it done one page at a time. We'll all be cheering for you.

Rox Delaney said...

Breaking down goals is the only way to go. Yay, Melissa! And congrats on the spreadsheet. Seeing progress that way is a huge motivator. And of course you can do this!

Melissa Robbins said...

Thanks guys! I have been doing more plotting than writing this week, but I think that will help me in the long run.

Yeah,Rox, and seeing a lack of progress is another huge motivator. ;0)