Registration for the King’s Daughters’ Writing Camp opens on Thursday! And with registration comes picking goals for writing camp. (Of course these goals can be changed later.) But how do you set realistic goals for writing?
There are many different types of goals you could set.
- You could pick minutes
- You could choose hours
- You could decide on words
- You could opt for pages
- You could settle on chapters
- You could select projects
- You could consider school essays
But which one?! Let’s break this down into a few steps.
First, what do you plan to work on? Is it one specific thing? Is it editing? Do you just want to see what you can get written? Do you need to do research?
Second, how does the month of November look like as far as busy goes? Do you have plans for Thanksgiving? School projects you have to get done? Activities you have planned? Or is your month pretty open?
Third, do you want to really challenge yourself or set a goal that isn’t too hard but one you will have to work to reach?
Now let’s look at those options again and think about them.
- You could pick minutes
- You could choose hours
- You could decide on words
- You could opt for pages
- You could settle on chapters
- You could select projects
- You could consider school essays
I personally don’t like to do something big like projects, chapters or hours. Why? Because if I only have a little bit of time in a day, and my goal is something big, I don’t feel like I’ve made progress. But, if I pick minutes or words, or even pages, I can edit or research for 5 minutes, write 27 words, edit 1 page and will be able to update my progress. Of course you are making progress even if you can’t update, but sometimes it’s easy to just not work unless you have a large block of time if your goal is projects, hours, or things like that.
Next, taking into consideration what you are wanting to work on, and how busy or empty your month is looking, decide on your goal. If you normally write 100 words a day, then setting a goal of 50k, is not going to be realistic. But if you chose 3k, that would be an average amount for you, and you could change it to 3,500 to give yourself a challenge. Figure out what you might get done normally and then raise it for a bit of a challenge, or lower it some if you think your month is going to be crazy.
Personally, I usually set my goal at 20k words at the beginning of the month because I try to write 5k a week. But if I’m almost to 20k before the month is half over, I up my goal. And yes, I decide on words as my goal. But not just on one project. It can be any story (even new ones).
Was this helpful? How do you set writing goals? Or do you set goals? Do you like minutes, hours, words, pages, chapters, projects, or school essays for goals?
I prefer word count for my goal too. It’s fairly easy to track once you’re in the habit, it adds up quickly, and it helps the percentage of the spreadsheet. 20k seems to be a pretty good number for me to shoot for sometimes too, but I think I’ll just start out with 15k this time since writing hasn’t been coming together very much lately.
Yes, sometimes any kind of tracking requires a good habit to make it easy.
Hopefully that 15k will grow into something more. 😀
I normally choose words because it’s more attainable, but this time I think I’ll be choosing minutes or pages because I’m editing and working almost full time which means my goal will have to be something I can work on in super small increments 🙂
That sounds like a good idea since you are editing. I never get a lot of words when I’m editing. 🙂
This is very helpful, thank you Rebekah! I generally like to aim for a certain word goal for each writing session, like 1K -1200 words give or take 🙂
You’re welcome. Those are great goals to have for each time you write.
I haven’t written in a long time, but I was thinking of a new book, a sequel to a finished project…not that that book was published or anything. Thoughts of how it should go just keep jumping in my head. I would need to make a goal that is attainable and sustainable yet challenging since I have not written in over a year. I’m thinking a building scale of words per day, like start off with easy maybe 500 words then go up by 500 words each week 🤔. But that would put me at 1500 words on Thanksgiving Day!🤣🙄😬. Suggestions?
That sounds like a good idea to me. Sometimes you need to ease back into writing, other times you can dive in and write a lot. Maybe make that your goal, but be willing to be flexible. Write more or even a little less now and then. If the ideas are coming and you have time to write, keep going. If things stall or you are really busy, cut back a little and give the story a chance to rest.