Writing Goals

Online talk about RWA's National Conference in Nashville is starting to heat up, and it suddenly just occurred to me that I only have 13 weeks to finish my novel and get it ready to pitch. Well, okay, so I realized this last week, but the shock and panic is still there now!

I know that the world will not end and the sky will not fall if I don't have this novel finished. But I just don't want to let the opportunity to pitch this go by. Especially when my #1 Dream Agent is accepting pitch appointments! There's no guarantee I'll be able to meet with her, but every day, I send up a silent prayer begging God to make sure there's still a slot open for me by the time I can sign up.

In order to meet my goals, I really need to stick to a very strict 7,000 words a week for my rough draft. Now, if I hadn't thrown away my NaNo WriMo version of the story, I'd probably be almost finished with this thing, but since I started all over at the beginning of the year, I'm only 20,000 words into the novel. Yikes! That's not even close to halfway yet. On a good note, I think I have most of the plotting figured out, so now it's just a matter of getting the story down on paper as fast as I can. 7,000 words should do it and still give me time to revise and polish some before the pitch.

So, how am I doing this week? As far as my goal is concerned, I decided to set a Monday - Sunday schedule, with each Sunday being the deadline for the 7k words. Since it's Friday, I only have today and two more to get the full word count down. Right now, I'm sitting at about 3500 words, which honestly isn't too bad. There's no reason I can't write another 3500 words by Sunday night, right? It's going to mean a "working weekend" , but as a writer, that's the way it should be every weekend. I'm going to work hard to reach this goal each and every week. I just have to take it one day (and one word) at a time.