So, Day 4 was a bit of an underachiever for me, and that is 100% my fault.

I only wrote 1,002 words today, and I wrote them sitting in the waiting room at my local Ford dealership while the superlative staff there to performed some routine maintenance on my vehicle.

After that, necessities–such as a supply run to Kroger and Walmart plus the associated unloading–took the rest of my day.

While I have you, I’d like to address something related to goals. It’s important to set goals that are measurable, feasible, clearly stated, and 100% in your control. “Sell 100,000 copies of my next novel” is not a viable goal, but I simply cannot go out and make 100,000 people buy the novel. “Write 8,000 words per day” or “Write for a total of 8 hours each day” are both viable goals. They meet all four criteria mentioned above.

So, what happens if I don’t meet my goal? Do I get depressed and never set another goal? No.

My goal of 1.5 million words of new fiction by the end of December 31st is what I like to call a growth goal. This first time trying, I probably won’t meet it, but the words I’ll produce trying will be new, good words I didn’t have before. And going into 2022, I’ll set the same goal: 1.5 million words of new fiction by the end of June 30th…all with an eye toward writing more than I did the previous time segment.

See? Growth goal. It’s all about pushing myself to achieve a level of productivity I haven’t done before.

It’s good to have easy goals. The ‘feel good’ goals that you know you won’t have to stretch to achieve, because all healthy success is good. But I personally feel that I need growth goals to push me a little bit and help me achieve the next level (or plateau, if you will) of production.

One of my dreams is to have a stockpile of projects that are fully produced and ready to publish. When/if I achieve that, Book 1 of a new series will release on the first Tuesday in January, and the rest of the books will release throughout the year…all on pre-order and all complete. That way, all I have to do is write one chapter each day to keep the stock up, so to speak, which will–in turn–allow me a great amount of time to pursue my other interests (like woodworking).

Daily Word Count: 1,002

Monthly Word Count: 12,249

Total Words for 2021: 174,396