Moving your goal posts
I am not a fast writer.
It’s a heady combination of procrastination, overwhelm, a high degree of distractibility and the rampant urge to edit and make things “perfect” on my first go. But I am not a fast writer. Before kids, when I had long stretches of evening hours to write, I’d push to hit 1,000 words per writing session. But even then, I could only sustain that for a week or two, and then I’d need to step back and take a break.
When I became a mom, I found I actually wrote more, largely because I couldn’t waste my few writing minutes staring poetically out the window and waiting for inspiration. When my second was born, I wrote an 80,000-word romantic comedy on a google doc on my phone, one thumb swipe at a time as I breastfed. But looking back, even that wasn’t fast. It took nearly a year to get those 80,000 words.
This year when NaNaWriMo was coming up again, I knew (as I do every year) that there was no way I would set myself up for that failure. But just as January brings high hopes of optimistic resolutions, November has become my Writing New Year, and this year I wanted to try something different.
Years ago, in the midst of a “woe is me” writing self-pity party, my husband gently told me to move my goal posts. If I couldn’t manage 1,000 words each day, what *could* I accomplish? That advice has followed me over the years, and so this November—in the middle of a chaotic school year, increased freelance demands, a seemingly endless parade of colds and viruses and subtle signs of burnout—I came up with three simple goals:
Drink water every day. No amount specified. A mouthful from my water bottle counts.
Avoid all social media for the month of November, most especially Twitter and Instagram.
Write 100 words every day.
All goals that even on my worst, most hurried, most unorganized of days I could still accomplish. And—as I suspected—these teeny goals have led to big payoffs. My big blue water bottle has become an integral part of my day. My mental health is significantly calmer without obsessive doom scrolling. And writing? Though it feels like tempting the wrath of the writing gods, I’ll say it quietly here anyways: I’ve written at least 100 words every single day since November 1st, and so far I’ve added nearly 8,000 words onto my current WIP. That may feel like a snail’s pace for some, but it’s a damn sight more than I’d written over the last six months. Some days I write 102 words, some days 1,800. But every day I’m thinking about my story, and every day I get the serotonin boost of forward momentum.
So if there’s something you’ve been feeling stuck on or overwhelmed by because it just feels so big, make a tiny goal. Commit to just opening a word doc and saving it under “Current WIP,” or take out a blank canvas and prop it up somewhere you’ll see it every day. Let your ideas percolate in the back of your mind and then, when you can take five minutes, write a sentence or sketch a few lines or call about that class you’ve been wondering about.
You can always take that first step.