I have wanted to write this post for a while now and finally decided to just move it up in my schedule. As we all know setting and meeting daily goals is one of the most effective skills and author can master. In general, there are three different types of goals I use. Each is useful under a different circumstance.

1. WORD COUNT GOALS: “I’m going to write 1,000 words every day!”

Pros

• It’s easy to see the light at the end of the tunnel. You know that if you write one thousand words a day you’ll have a rough draft of a seventy thousand word novel in seventy days. (Or if you write two thousand words a day you’ll have a seventy thousand word novel in just over a month.)
• If you accomplish your daily goal you’ll be guaranteed to have written something. Sure your thousand (or two thousand, or three thousand) words might be rough but it’s something that didn’t exist this morning.
• It’s an approach similar to NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) and therefore you can get lots of tips/support from others who have tried this strategy.

Cons

• It’s difficult to schedule. A thousand words might take 45 minutes at the beginning of the manuscript but 90 minutes when you are deeper in the story and don’t know where the heroes are taking you.
• You might find yourself cheating, writing long descriptions or not using conjunctions just to meet your daily goal.

When I Use This Goal

In rough drafts of novels and short stories (I try to write rough drafts of book reviews and blogs in one sitting). The word count goal often pushes me through a story. When I reach my goal, I’ve very often picked up so much momentum I keep going and end up several hundred or even a thousand words beyond the point I was planning to stop.

2. TIME GOALS: “I’m going to write one hour every day!”

Pros

• You know exactly how much time you’re going to spend writing every day. This is especially important if you have a busy schedule.
• The ticking clock motivates you to push ahead instead of wasting time watching YouTube.
• It’s easier to fluctuate. You can write for one hour on work days and three hours on weekends. (I’ve found it harder to vary it up like this with word count but that might just be me.)
• It’s easier to tell your loved ones, “I’ll be done in (exactly this amount of time) and then I’ll be finished for the day.”

Cons

• You can waste your entire time focusing on the same paragraph without making any real progress. Then, when your time is up it’s up for the day and you won’t go back until tomorrow.
• Other tasks/responsibilities often creep into your sacred hour.

When I Use It

• Either 1) When I have a particularly busy day or 2) Later in the editing process. It’s hard to predict how long it will take to edit a thousand words. So rather than focusing on amount edited I focus on time spent (unless I have a deadline).

3. CHAPTER GOALS: “I’m going to write one chapter a day!”

Cons (see how I’m switching things up here)

• Basically every con for word count and then some.
• Chapters vary in length A LOT. There are some chapters in my novel, The Night Highway, that are well over ten pages long, there are others that are just a few paragraphs. So you’d be doing a lot more work some days than others.
• It is nearly impossible to predict how long it will take to write a chapter from day to day, so it’s harder to fit in your schedule.
• If you don’t know where your chapter is going you can find yourself stuck.
• If you fall behind it’s harder to catch up.
• We often don’t know when a chapter is going to break until after we reach that point.
• It’s hard to predict how many chapters a book will have so it’s almost impossible to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

Pros

• But despite all these cons, this goal has been working the best for me and here’s why: Chapters (at least my chapters) tend to be like mini-short stories. They have a distinct beginning, middle and end. Characters develop, problems are solved and greater problems introduced. Therefore, if you’re writing a chapter a day you’re basically writing a short story a day. You fall into a rhythm. Rather than stopping in the middle of a scene like you would with the other two strategies, you leave off at a natural conclusion, often a cliffhanger that will propel you into the next scene. Then on the next day you begin at a natural opening point.
• That’s really it, that’s the only pro for this category, but it’s been working the best for me despite the drawbacks.

When I Use It

• Between rough drafts and nitpicking editing, around drafts 2-4, when I have a solid idea of the story and where it’s going, but I still have a lot of changes that need to be made.

Finally, Don’t Forget…

Always reward yourself for meeting your goal, whether it’s an extra 20 minutes of TV or video games or a snack that’s bad for you. Teach your brain that if you accomplish your daily writing goals it will get something in return.