Writing Goals and Why Every Writer Should Have Them

Back when I was writing for Scribophile, I wrote a post titled "Challenges, Contests And Writing Olympics: Why Do We Participate?". It was a humorist answer to why exactly writing challenges are so popular among writers. The post is over a year old, so you might be wondering why I'm even talking about it again.

The answer is simple. This year I signed up for FindYourWords again and Friday is the day when I report back with my weekly word count.

I didn't meet my goal last year. For various reasons. Maybe I simply wasn't ready, I don't know. But this year, I set my goal at a modest 65K, thinking that with writing another 20K big bang, I would be able to meet the goal by the end of the year.

And let me tell you, it's extremely satisfying to see I'm almost half way through.

I think at some level, I can attribute this productivity to the fact that I report to someone every week. "Hey, I wrote this many words this week". I see other writers reporting their progress. Some of them posting snippets of their work, others saying they are in the middle of editing and so their word count isn't that big.

And reading all those comments from writers all over the world makes me feel guilty every time I have to admit I haven't written a word.

Now, I participate in the challenge over at Livejournal, because I'm active there in the fandom community. But there are many places out there for writers, where you can share your daily accomplishments.

There's The One-Minute Writer where they post one prompt a day and you can share what you've written with other in the comments. What I did (even though with my current bigger projects I don't have time to write smaller pieces, is subscribing to the blog, and I get my daily prompt with my other Feeds.

And of course you can't forget about Inky Girl and her three challenges: write 1000 words a day, write 500 words a day and write 250 words a day. Basically, based on the time you have at your disposal, how much do you want to push yourself, you choose the challenge best suitable for you.

Now, if you excuse me, I have to go and report those 2642 words I've written this week (not counting the outline I'm working on).