Not too long ago I blogged about a writing schedule for the book I’m working on. I was careful not to be overly ambitious at the time, and only made a schedule for what I as working on: gathering possible homestead blog posts for Critter Tales. Even though I successfully met that schedule, I confess that’s as far as I got concerning scheduling.
Something else writers do is set a goal of writing so many words per day. This is similar to how NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) works, challenging participants to write 50,000 words during the month of November. That seems like a lot but I’ve read blog posts by participants who divide it into a daily goal. Spreading that 50,000 words out over 30 days means only 1666.66 words per day, which doesn’t seem so bad, does it? If one takes the weekends off, it would be more, but hopefully still a manageable goal.
For me, I’ve thought it might make sense to aim for a chapter a day, rather than a word amount. My chapters aren’t terribly long anyway, and keeping focused until the chapter is done really helps with my flow of thought and various ideas that pop into my head. So that’s my goal, a chapter a day.
At this point I don’t know how many chapters there will be, so I don’t know how long it will take me to get them all done. The chicken chapters are finished (I think) and almost all edited. The next step has been to compile them into a “Chicken Tales” section, after which I’ll recruit beta readers for feedback. I’ll do the same with the other sections as I get their various chapters done.
I have to say it helps having a goal. Summertime on the homestead is so busy that it’s far too easy to run out of day before running out of projects. But, as a wise man once said, by the inch it’s a cinch, by the yard it’s hard. I just have to make sure those inches keep adding up.
[UPDATE: July 26, 2014] Perhaps a whole chapter per day was a bit ambitious. Given the time I have available for writing each day, I’m finding it realistically takes more like 3 days. One to gather the blog posts, one to rewrite them, and one to do another go-over before sending it off to be proofread. Still, it’s a good goal and that’s good progress for me!]