As writers, how many times do we hear that the best way to watch those pages stack up is to set a goal for yourself. We hear a constant and resounding shout to write this many words or that many pages a day, a week, a month. I don’t know about you, but this type of talk creates the same stressful zing of fear that I felt when given an assignment in high school.
Having researched NaNoWriMo (National Novel Writing Month) in the middle of November I thought it would be just the hard nosed push I needed to make serious progress on my novel. So, I vehemently said that I would hit it strong in December. And then again in January. I tried it all, setting a monthly word goal, a weekly page goal, a daily word goal. Not only did I become frustrated and down on myself if and when I didn’t hit these goals, everything that I wrote seemed awkward and forced. I was pushing the story rather than the words flowing freely and finding their home on the page. I didn’t like the process, and I didn’t like the stress but I appreciated the importance of setting and achieving writing goals. How do I make this work!?
Then I saw this quote by good ol’ Pablo Picasso and everything slid into place:
“Learn the rules like a pro. So you can break them like an artist.”
Yes! That’s exactly it. Having a goal and holding myself to the fire were “rules” that needed to be learned and held firm but maybe, just maybe, I could do that in my own artistic way. Broken rules, not deleted.
All said and done, I much rather prefer NOT to set specific, constraining goals for myself. It just doesn’t allow me to breathe the way my creative mind wants to. Instead, I am broader, more lenient and I celebrate the sheer fact of being able to write when and what I can. Every. Single. Day. Especially for the first draft when it is so important just to get those new little baby words on the paper. I’ll crack down a little deeper on the second, thank you very much! I will always want to write more, that’s the beauty (and curse) of being a writer. To me, this is not a race to the finish line, this is a meandering joy ride through the twists and turns of my subconscious. I enjoy the ride, the minutes spent getting lost in the words. When you are having fun riding the ride, you don’t look forward to the end!
As soon as I lifted those goals off my shoulders and threw them out the window a funny thing happened. I wrote! Wrote well, AND made more progress than I had been able to manage for the last two months. If you struggle with this as I do, I say give yourself a break and just WRITE!
How about you, my writer friend? Do you work better with a set goal in mind or would you rather not?
Image by Rosy / Bad Homburg / Germany from Pixabay
Yes! You are not alone.