Sometimes the only way to see where your limits are is to push yourself past what you think they are. Since I started on this writing journey I’ve set increasingly more difficult goals for myself. The only way to avoid being overwhelmed is to plan and to be extremely dedicated. The schedule I’ve set for myself kind of have people blinking incomprehensibly at me when I tell them my plan, but it feels doable, if I stick to my schedule. When I first started to track my daily writing my goal was 500 words a day with the word count resetting each morning and no skipping was allowed. Then it progressed to 1,000 words a day, and then to it’s current 1,500 words a day. It can be in any medium, blog, novel, short story with small credits allowed for story design, etc., but the word count should be met daily and any shortcomings recovered within a week or so. With the plan and schedule I’ve devised I will be producing 1 novel, 4 children’s books, 3 short stories and one anthology per year in addition to 5 blog posts and 1 vlog per week.
How on earth can this be done? It’s pretty simple, I love writing. It’s less a hobby and more a lifestyle that I adhere to religiously and with a lot of passion. When I’m not writing, I’m thinking about writing and there are too many stories in my head to not write them down just to get them out. I write through almost every lunch hour, vast majority of my evening and nearly all of my weekends. I don’t mind, in fact, I love it and am happiest when I’m producing the written word. Some days it’s really hard, if you’re suffering from writers block it can be incredibly frustrating, but you have to keep going. Write something, anything, it doesn’t matter if its garbage, that’s what editing is for! This is what I want to do and be and I recognize that it takes a colossal amount of work to achieve something worthwhile, to achieve something that you can be intensely proud of. I was asked at the book club I attended what I do for myself since I’m so busy with my writing. The answer is that the writing is for myself. I’ve been a writer since I was little and I’m going to keep being a writer because it’s a part of who I am. I intend to keep writing until my fingers fall off, at which point I will use dictation software to write instead. What you’ve seen from me already is only the tip of the iceberg.
Thanks for stopping by!
-Erin