My goal for the month of February was to finish the first draft of my novel and to write one blog post every day. These goals have taught me one very important lesson: Set realistic goals.
I’ve missed the one-blog-post-per-day mark already. I’m not horrified by that, but I am a little surprised. I’m likely going to miss the finish-the-book goal, which I actually knew the moment I started writing on it earlier this month. As it turns out, there were two things working against me in February:
First, the novel is going to be a little longer than I expected. I was thinking the first draft would cap out at around 120,000 words, but I’ve already surpassed that and still have a ways to go. I’m now expecting it to clock in at around 140k. I’m not at all bothered by missing this goal, because I don’t believe I’m missing it as a result of laziness or complacency.
It’s amazing the unexpected things that pop into your writing when constructing fiction. I have a plan for how this novel ends, and I had most of a plan constructed for how to get there. As I wrote, I saw holes; parts that needed filling-in not so that the ending would make sense, but so that how the characters got there would make sense. The last bit of manuscript before the novel’s climax needed some additional info, else it was going to be a jumbled mess.
Hell, it probably still is, but that’s where I stand with it.
Second, the month was filled with holidays and things that required preparation that I had not previously accounted for. The first half of the month was spent adjusting to my new environment and learning how to develop a self-driven work ethic. The second half of the month contains Valentine’s Day, my 35th Birthday, and the Geekerific.com presence at Emerald City Comicon, all of which required my attention and interfered with writing. Not to mention the fact that in the middle of it all, I got deathly sick for about a week.
My original goals did not take into account my personal adjustment period, but overall they did not account for outside forces. I assumed – yeah, yeah, it makes an ass out of Umed… or something – that I would just be able to devote every waking moment to those two goals. In my excitement for that idea, I failed at the whole, you know, reality thing. Hell, I missed my blog post yesterday because I churned out almost 2,300 words on the book. You know, priorities and stuff.
And you know what? It doesn’t really bother me. The last three weeks has taught me so much about my writing process that it’s worth the effort even if I didn’t technically “finish” my goals. I’ve finally entered the climactic conflict in the novel, and I’ve gained insight on the types of things I wand to talk about in my blog. Oddly enough, where I’ve gained confidence in my fiction writing, I’ve eroded my confidence in my blogging after reading a ton of other blogs that are both better informed, more interesting, and way more eloquent than I am.
But I’m still gonna do it, whether you people want to read it or not.
