Set a Weekly Writing Goal! (or a WWG)

Sup Guys? Morgan here again with more of those writing-inspiration-tip-thinggys! Last time I told you about ‘Don’t Break the Chain!’ which I find to be a great and thoroughly efficient way to keep authors on track and writing consistently over a long period of time. But there ARE a few problems with that approach. In some cases, like mine, you go on to write with the ‘Don’t Break the Chain’ attitude and then only end up putting in a few useable sentences after a bad case of writers block. I mean, it’s better than nothing though… right? WRONG. Not writing consecutively over a period of time is one of the WORST habits you can develop as an aspiring author. What happens if you actually FINISH that first-in-series novel you’ve been working on for the last FOUR years? And then, with major luck, actually PUBLISH it? When you start on the second one in your series, do you feel comfortable making your readers wait ANOTHER four years for you to finish that next book? Hmm… Not exactly, but what can you do? That’s just the way you write. NO! Stop the excuses. Personally if I was reading a book, and it took FOUR WHOLE YEARS for the next one to come out, I wouldn’t really be very interested in it anymore, no matter HOW good the story is. A good solution to this HORRIBLE habit is to set up a Weekly Writing Goal to go along with your Don’t Break the Chain calendar. When putting together your WWG, keep in mind that it’s better to aim LOW and end HIGH than aim HIGH and end LOW. For example my weekly writing goal is about a half a chapter each week. Doesn’t seem very big does it? That’s because it’s not! No matter how long you imagine a chapter to be in your mind, you can always finish a full one in between two or three sittings. Really a half of a chapter wouldn’t take more than a few minutes to a couple hours at most in order to complete. The reason why I set mine so low though, is because of the weeks when I’m out of town or super busy. It’s a heck of a lot better to be able to say that you exceed your WWG (weekly writing goal) that was low, than to miss one that was high. And then after that, when you get more used to scheduling time around your daily writing sessions, raise the bar a bit. Make it harder as you get better, and soon you’ll be writing WHOLE chapters in single sittings.

Here’s a link to a counter you can re-set each week to show how close you are to reaching your WWG:

Hope this helps you with any of the efficiency problems you may or may not be having,
-Morgan-