Every year, I set a handful of goals for painting and writing for the year. Twenty paintings completed, for example. Or an average of 4,000 words written every day.
For 2010, my writing goals were straight-forward. Among them were:
Write 1.25 million words in 2010 (including everything from letters home to blog articles to actual fiction)
Produce two new novels
Consider July Novel Writing Month
Consider National Novel Writing Month
Today, I achieved one of those goals department. Believe it or not, I exceeded 1.25 million total words sometime this morning.
When I set that goal at the beginning of the year, I thought it was attainable. I had originally thought about setting a goal of one million words, but thought that might be too easy. Looks like maybe 1.25 million was too easy, too.
At my current pace, the anticipated annual total word count for 2010 is looking like about 1.88 million words. I’m wondering about raising the bar somewhat and adjusting the year end goal upward to an even two million.
Or maybe even higher than that.
Part of me is asking why not just coast through the rest of the year.
But the other part, the part that likes deadlines and challenges, is asking, “Why settle? Why settle for 1.88 million? Why settle for 2 million? Why not make it interesting?”
Why not, indeed. That is, after all, what gets stories written. All those words.
